


Without Dark, There Is No Light

by Deesent



Category: World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deesent/pseuds/Deesent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Valeera's rehab in Moonglade is going well, but is interrupted by a surprise visitor from Darnassus</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Surprise Visit

**Author's Note:**

> First WoW fic. First fic of any kind. Apologies if I've left out any tags or warnings that should be there. Comment with suggestions if you have any.
> 
> Also, I'm not super committed to honoring canon or existent lore. I mostly just want more about Valeera, so I'm writing it. Hopefully many more chapters to follow.

It is early morning in Moonglade, and the druid Laana Mistwhisperer lies awake in her bed. This summer has been especially hot, and the breeze that flutters the shimmering curtains in the window to her right is warm and fragrant. She at once thinks of soil, rich with decay, with death and new life, and she can hear the burrowing of worms—the very beasts that give the soil its power—and the bursting of seeds, the stretching of saplings as they reach for the sun, high above their ancestors’ majestic crowns.

The druid does all this without effort, but not without intention. She’s lived with the natural magic in her bosom for a thousand upon a thousand years, and the murmurings of the world have become as familiar in her ears as her own breathing, as the beating of her heart, but they have become thus through something far beyond practice—not the casual repetition most associate with practice. It has been her regimen, her in and out, the air that she breathes and the water she bathes in. To Laana, there is nothing else in Azeroth: all things, all people, all animals, everything that lives and everything that does not, is all one. It is all the natural magic, and it is all one.

Or so it was until six months ago. And now, beside her—curled against her, with the gossamer sheet pulled over her shoulders—lies Valeera Sanguinar, a woman against whom a year ago Laana might have taken up arms, whose race has been at near war with the Night Elves of Darnassus and the druids of Moonglade for time out of mind. But this young Blood Elf—barely more than a girl by elven standards—came to Laana from Broll Bearmantle, one of the greatest heroes of Darnassus and indeed the Alliance wholly.

“Laana Mistwhisperer,” he said to her, and when she closes her eyes lying beside the girl now, the memory remains vivid and clear, “care for her. Her affliction cannot be cured outside Moonglade, for there is far too much temptation, far too much evil, and far too much unnatural magic.”

The girl lay in his arms, asleep, but the scars of corruption danced up and down the bare skin of her arms and legs and even her face. They told the tale as far as Laana needed to hear it, and she argued: “Do we call the ability of our people to disappear into the shadows an affliction?”

Broll narrowed his eyes at her.

“Do we call the human willfulness and knack for escape,” Laana went on, “an illness? Or the dwarves of Ironforge, when they become as stone to _shake off_ the curses and poisons that drop the strongest of us to our knees, do we say they require druidic healing to recover?”

Broll grunted, and furrowed his brow. “Laana,” he said, his voice almost as gruff as the rumbling growl of his bear form. “Your implications are understood.”

“I’m implying nothing,” Laana said. She turned her back on the huge druid in her doorway. The afternoon sun cast his shadow on the wall before her, towering over her, his antlers like the branches of the great tree in winter. “I’m saying it outright.” She addressed his shadow as he moved into the room, his heavy feet almost silent on the wood panels of the floor. “Put her on a ship. Send her to Quel’danas. And don’t darken my doorway again while your sympathies lie with her . . . or her ilk.”

But Broll ignored her impassioned plea. He carried his burden to Laana’s slim bed instead and laid her down carefully. He pulled off her hood and her boots, and he pulled up Laana’s thin blanket to cover her. “I’m sorry, child.” He spoke then not to the Blood Elf, who actually was a child, but to Laana, a thousand years his junior, an elfling when Broll won an enormous victory for the alliance and entered his self-imposed exile. He’d only come back to the Night Elves a few seasons ago, but he’d made himself close to all the druids of Moonglade, something of a returning great-grandfather, a teacher, a wise man. “Perhaps someday you and I will exchange long-winded witticisms on the matter, but today I must deposit my charge and leave you. King Varian Wrynn has ordered it.”

“What am I to _do_ with her?” Laana chased the huge druid to the door and grabbed hold of his arm. She feared nothing from him, for as famous as his rage in the face of evil was his newfound compassion, control, and caring.

Come to think of it, Laana had heard something about the Blood Elf girl who’d helped bring about this change—a girl with whom he and the lost king of Stormwind had triumphed time and time again. Laana spent so little time with her mind outside Moonglade, such worldly matters didn’t seem to touch her, and here they were, in her home by order of the leader of the Alliance.

Broll looked down at her, his face shrouded in shadow. “Care for her.” His voice was gentle and rich, like the wind along the Zoram Strand. “Help her to heal. Help her to see the beauty of natural magic, how it wraps itself around you and moves through your veins and brightens your senses.”

His voice took hold of her, and she watched the Blood Elf in her bed as she turned and pulled up a corner of the blanket. “I will,” she said. “As you say.”

And she has. But she’s done more than that. She’s lain with this Blood Elf girl in the grass at the shrine to Remulos. She’s waded on the rocky shallows of Lake Elune’ara. They laughed that afternoon as the sun began to set over the hills to the west. “Are you sure you’re a Blood Elf, Valeera?” Laana said, her smile as wide as the sky. “Because the way the sunset strikes your hair and casts your body in a soft golden glow, I’d swear you could be one of the quel’dorei.” Had that been the day she’d fallen in love?

This morning, Laana rises from bed carefully, easing Valeera slowly to the mattress, but when she’s only steps away, the girl rises, sending the thin blanket to the floor in a heap.

“Laana,” she says as if startled.

The druid turns and kneels beside the bed. “I’m here.” She keeps her voice calm and comforting, and she smiles. The voice is practiced; the smile is automatic, for the sight of Valeera’s face in the morning—her cheeks creased from their sheets, her lips soft-looking and full, her eyes half closed, still faraway, wherever she’d been in her dreams—fills Laana with joy in a way so new, so vivid, so electric, in a way her natural magic never has.

“Of course you are,” Valeera says as she sits up and takes Laana’s face in both hands. “My moonlight.”

Valeera’s lips _are_ soft, and the elves—their people as different as night and day, as the moon and the sun they worship—linger together at the bedside in their kiss, as below them in the town of Nighthaven the day begins with a surprise visitor from Darnassus.

Valeera sits on the balcony that reaches just over the edge of the lake from Laana’s second floor. She’s still not taken to thinking of Laana’s house as _her_ house as well. It would be presumptuous to assume such a thing, of course, but perhaps more than that, Valeera isn’t sure she wants this house to be her home.

She loves the Night Elf downstairs; there can be no doubt about that. She’s loved so few people in her life: Broll, Lo’gosh, the mother and father she can hardly remember. But she’s never given herself over so completely to anyone before Laana Mistwhisperer.

 _Such a ridiculous name,_ she thinks, smiling at the rising run to her left. It shines on the surface of the lake, and it warms the skin on her bare arms, and on her legs when she lets her robe hang open below her thighs. It’s the most beautiful place she’s ever been, Moonglade. It’s green and it’s blue, and it’s gentle and good. _And no one here is trying to kill me._

Voices rise from Nighthaven, and Valeera gets up from her bench and leans on the railing. She can see the little village to her right, and while it’s normally serene, especially in the early hours while druids throughout Moonglade meditate on the rising of the sun and the glisten of every dew drop on every blade of grass in Azeroth, now she sees elves hurrying about, calling out to each other, and at their head—dressed in a shining white robe and taller than any other elf she’s ever known, possibly aside from Broll—is a woman whose importance is as plain as the rising sun itself.

Beneath her, Laana steps onto the modest home’s front porch. “Who is it?” Valeera calls down to her, because the woman and her entourage—more women, geared for war, or dressed in robes and circlets just slightly less ornate than those of their mistress—are clearly heading up the hill and along the shore of Lake Elune’ara to Laana’s front door.

Laana looks up at her—her shining golden eyes wide with alarm. “Come down here, precious,” she hisses up to her. “I’m afraid this can’t be a casual visit, and likely has something to do with you.”

“But who _is_ she?”

“She is Tyrande Whisperwind,” Laana says, “high priestess of Elune, the most powerful Night Elf in Azeroth.”

“Your Excellency.” Laana kneels in her own doorway, her forehead pressed to the cool stone floor, her arms out and her fingers splayed, before the High Priestess.”

“Rise, child.”

From Tyrande, the word feels appropriate, even loving—not condescending as it does from Broll—and Laana stands. “You honor my house, Excellency.”

“You will forgive me, child,” the priestess says, and though both now stand, she towers over the druid. She looks down at her with kindness, though, and Laana feels herself lighten inside. She’s heard of course of the High Priestess’s power and of her love for her race, but she’s never met her, never stood so close to her, never felt the power of the Light emanate from a person so vividly. Her beauty makes Laana’s brightly decorated home--that which she’s spent a thousand years caring for and filling with the things that bring her the most joy, make her feel intrinsically one with her world and her magic and her race—seem dull and dim.

“I did not intend such pomp for this visit,” Tryande goes on as she moves through Laana’s house. Her guards flank her—two warriors from Darnassus, women with the brute physical strength that Laana can only harness from the earth itself—but behind her, aware enough of decorum to wait outside, stand a throng of elves from down in Nighthaven. Laana sees Geenia Sunshadow, the dressmaker, no doubt admiring Tyrande’s admittedly stunning robes. With her of course is Loralae Wintersong, who sells trade supplies in the village. When Laana briefly studied leatherworking, she spent a lot of time with Loralae, but in recent years she’s focused so much on her druidic magic that in truth she can’t be sure the last time Loralae came to visit. “But my presence has a tendency to bring our sisters and brothers to gather.”

“Understandably, your grace,” Laana says. “We adore you. Will you sit? I’ve made tea.”

“No, child,” Tyrande says, her golden eyes sparkling, her smile playful and warm. “I come not to speak with you, nor to take advantage of your hospitality, which I’m sure rivals that of the storied quel’dorei lords and ladies. Rather, I—Ah! And she appears.”

Laana turns and finds Valeera, still in her dressing robe, her narrow feet bare, her blond hair cascading over her shoulders in a tangle of tendrils and curls, coming down the stairs, a glass of tea in her hands and a look of utter bewilderment in her shining and pale green eyes. “Hello?”

Tyrande moves to the base of the stairs and her warrior guards and priestess maidens flank her. She keeps her smile and her loving air, but something about the move seems aggressive. Valeera stops her descent on the third step from the bottom. “This is the exiled Blood Elf that has our favorite son _struck_ by love.” She glances over her shoulder and Laana. “And now perhaps a favorite _daughter_?”

“Broll?” Valeera says. “I hardly think he—”

“Forgive me,” Tyrande says, extending one hand to lead Valeera off the steps. “I do enjoy teasing my daughter _and_ cousins now and again. You’re a lovely thing. Come down now, and let me speak to you.”

Laana moves to the side as the High Priestess and her entourage surround Valeera in the front room. “Is anything wrong, Your Grace?” asks Laana. “Have we offended you somehow?”

Tyrande actually laughs. Laana will recall the sound later to Broll: “It was the sound of light breaking through a glass prism.” The High Priestess keeps her eyes on Valeera, and the women around her maintain their tight circle as she withdraws from a hidden pocket in her shimmering robes a scroll. “This arrived before dawn,” she says, handing the scroll down to the Blood Elf, “for you.”

“What is this?” Valeera says, her cheeks reddening and her fingers quivering. She’s a tough girl, and strong, but surrounded not only by night elves, all of whom tower over her, and Tyrande herself, who towers even more so, but also by more harnessed Holy Light of Creation than she’s ever been in her life. Her hand shakes not only with apprehension at the arrival of this auspicious entourage and their mysterious missive, but also with the temptation to take hold of this magic— _so much magic! It would fill her right up till she almost burst with its unimaginable glory!_

Laana feels her ward and lover’s anxiety, and she rises from her bench and slips into the circle to be at her side. The warriors step back a bit to allow her entry, but Laana senses something on the face of Her Grace: a shadow, the slightest flicker of darkness, clouds the High Priestess’s eyes for a fraction of instant. When it’s gone, Laana doesn’t believe it happened at all. “It bears the seal of Stormwind,” Laana says, running her fingertip over the wax seal holding the scroll tight: in the shape of a lion’s head, and with the metallic luster of gold.

“The _king_ himself, in fact,” Tyrande says, and with the merest flick of her finger knocks the seal loose. The scroll unrolls in Valeera’s hand and reveals the proud and angular script of King Varian Wrynn.

_Valeera Sanguinar—_

_Come to Stormwind. Come cautiously. Come at once._

_\--VW_

 

“Urgent, I suppose,” Tyrande says, “and to be kept quiet. A shame my arrival here has brought so much attention.”

“Why didn’t the messenger bring it to me directly,” Valeera says, holding out the scroll, “rather than to the Temple in Darnassus?”

The High Priestess clasps her hands and narrows her eyes at Valeera, darkening their golden shine. “Though the king knows you to be in the care of the Night Elves, he does not know exactly where you are. In Stormwind, they have not heard of Laana Mistwhisperer, and that is our intention. You are a powerful young woman, Valeera, and one whose particular affliction makes her a tempting ally to certain parties on the _wrong_ side of decency and morality. Were they to find you—and _tempt_ you to give in to your affliction—it would be a great blow to the Light, to Elune, to the Alliance, and yes, even to your Horde.”

“I don’t know if I’m worth all _that_.” Valeera keeps her eyes on the scroll and Lo’gosh’s familiar, angry script. “I didn’t intend to leave.” She looks at Laana, who smiles gently. “Not yet.”

“Of course,” Tyrande says, but she folds her guards into her arms and leads them to the door, “and I do wish you could stay here in Moonglade’s comforting embrace forever. That is the only way we’d _truly_ know your affliction will never endanger you or the Light again. Alas, it is not to be, for King Varian calls you to his side. He is an important ally to my people, and you love him. You will go at once.”

Valeera lowers the scroll and lets it roll up in her palms. She feels Laana’s hand on the small of her back, helping to still her mind. “As you say,” the Blood Elf says, her voice as calm as her mind with Laana beside her. “I’ll leave at once.”

Tyrande doesn’t stop as she leaves, but commands calmly, “Take a hippogriff to Rut’theran Village. A ship there will take you to Stormwind. And please don’t wear that ridiculous _red leather_ outfit of yours. It’ll attract too much attention. _Plain_ leather armor from one of the sellers in the village will do.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Valeera says quietly after her as the High Priestess and her entourage step down from the porch, leaving the Blood Elf alone with Laana’s arm around her slim shoulders. “I don’t think I’m ready.”

Laana hums beside her, understanding and loving.

“To fight,” Valeera goes on. “To see Lo’gosh, Anduin . . . the Stormwind Keep itself seems _terrifying_ just now.”

“You will do well, my dear heart,” Laana assures her, pivoting to face her and holding her in both hands. “Think of all you’ve learned here.”

“From _you_ ,” Valeera says, letting herself fall forward against Laana’s chest. She presses her ear against the Night Elf’s bosom and listens to the slow beating of her heart, the practiced circular rhythm of her druidic breathing.

“And from Moonglade,” Laana adds, her voice echoing and muffled, coming from within her as much as from her mouth. “From Elune’ara, from Remulos. From _the natural world_ itself.”

Valeera looks up at her. “From _love,_ ” she says, “my moonlight.”

The elf women say their goodbyes—with words and without—and by midafternoon, Valeera Sanguinar flies westward over Felwood, Darkshore, and the Great Sea to begin her mysterious and unexpected quest.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valeera crosses the Great Sea and arrives in Stormwind, while Laana back in Moonglade receives a middle-of-the-night message from Herald Moonstalker.

The wide sea that stretches between the two great continents of Azeroth is rough tonight, and Valeera Sanguinar has no stomach for sea travel at the best of times. She’s been below decks the whole trip thus far, hoping to avoid coming face-to-face with one of the ship’s Alliance passengers or crew and enduring the foul smells of an ocean-going ship’s underbelly, but as the small human-manned ship rounds the swirling Naga-infested waters of the Maelstrom—the mad captain seems intent on steering the ship as close to its demise as possible—Valeera’s belly demands the fresh sea air.

Stumbling up the stairs, one hand gripping the railing and the other holding her oversized black hood in place over her head and ears, she knocks into the wide and bare chest of a human man. “Excuse me,” she mutters, hoping to avoid any further interaction.

But he is having none of it. “Be a little careful, missy. Not everyone can handle the violent sea. Perhaps you’d better find a comfy seat and strap yourself to it.”

Valeera eyes him carefully from under her hood as she tries to slip by him. “Not everyone can handle their _dwarven liquor_ , either,” she mutters.

“What’s that?” He shifts to block her again, knocking her backward a step with his shoulder. “Did you have something to say, skinny one?” His breath reeks of alcohol, but it’s done nothing to dull his brazen masculinity. He wears it like a medal, and puffs out his chest to show it off.

“Not looking for trouble,” Valeera says, her head down and her right hand—hidden by the plain black cloak she bought in Rut’theran Village especially for the trip—caressing the handle of her dagger. “Just wanting some air on deck.”

He grunts, apparently unsure whether this little run-in ought to lead to a physical altercation, but in the end knocks her once more on his way past and into the ship’s belly. Valeera finishes her ascent, pulls in a long draft of air through her nose, and lets it out as she steps out of the shelter of the stairwell into the light, cool rain that drives nearly vertically across the ship.

The helmsman is at his post, and a crewman minds the riggings aft, but the deck is otherwise deserted. That shirtless cretin must have been the last to take shelter from the worsening weather. _Too drunk to know it was raining_. Valeera crosses to the railing at starboard and holds it to steady herself against the rough sea. Her hood flies back, and the cool, crisp sea air wraps itself around her head and throat. She squints against the spray, but feels her sickness fading at once.

She was here— _has it been over a year already?_ —with Lo’gosh and Broll, perhaps crossing this very stretch of ocean when a pack of naga led by a powerful witch boarded their ship bound for Menethil Harbor. Valeera sacrificed the little advance she’d made then against her affliction when she saved Broll by snatching that sea witch’s powerful trident and draining it of its arcane magic.

_Was that when it happened?_ she asks herself as she peers through the midnight mist over the wild Great Sea, black and indigo under the brilliant night sky. _Was that when I truly became addicted?_

“No,” she whispers aloud to herself. “This has always been who I am, since before I was born, taking in fel magic even in my mother’s sick, Blood Elf belly.”

“Blood Elf!” roars a voice from behind her over the din of the sea. “I should have known!”

Valeera turns, and though it’s too late to regain her cover, she pulls up her hood as she does and finds the shirtless human man standing at the top of the steps to below deck, his eyes wide with rage and a long sword—dull in color, but probably not in bite—in one hand.

“I asked myself,” he roars at her across the deck. “I said to myself, ‘Rusty, where did you know that accent from? That _foreign_ way of talking the girl on the steps used to insult you?’”

Valeera sneers at him and crosses her arms across her belly to have a hand on each dagger. They aren’t the daggers she prefers—her rewards back in Orgrimmar after an easily-won impromptu match during her gladiatorial training with Lo’gosh and Broll. These are trifles, purchased in Moonglade for a handful of silver.

But against this drunken warrior—bereft of his armor and senses—they’ll do.

“And do you know what I said?” he goes on.

“Maybe something about seeking the attention of a _shaman_ to help you stop _talking_ to yourself, _Rusty_?” Valeera says as she surreptitiously runs her fingers over the butt of each dagger on her hips, itching to draw them and show this foolish man who he’s dealing with.

The brute ignores her quip, but he stomps closer to her till Valeera can see how the spray off the sea gets caught in the hair on his chest and in his vulgar-looking mustache, like dew in a patch of ivy. It’s almost beautiful—but then again, not at all. “That’s a _Blood Elf_ , is what I said to myself. That’s the accent of a damned Blood Elf.”

“So what of it?” Valeera says, knowing full well what the human’s answer will be.

As lightning streaks across the purple sky, he raises his sword above his head with both hands and shouts with the echoing thunder, “Death to the Horde! For the Alliance!”

Valeera draws her daggers and crosses them under before her face just as the long sword swoops down upon her, blocking it. The warrior’s face at once betrays his surprise at being so easily parried by this “skinny” elf, and then the pain of her foot to his crotch. He drops to his knees before her, and she raises her knee into his chin, knocking him backward onto the drenched boards of the deck.

Valeera crouches beside him and lowers a blade to his throat, but she doesn’t kill him. Not yet. “I’m not Horde,” she says. “Nor Alliance, either. I want you to go to your grave knowing that I am a woman with _no_ allegiance to any _flag_. So you die now not for any nation, not for any _Alliance_ , and not in defiance of any Horde. You die for your own sniveling insecurities and your drunkenness.”

The warrior shakes his head and squints up at her through the mist. “Who are you?”

Valeera bites her lip and presses the dagger tighter against the taught skin of his throat. She raises her second dagger and pulls a strained, deep breath in through her nose, but before she can drive it like a stake into his chest, a strong hand grabs her wrist.

“Who—?” Valeera snaps, turning to regard this human’s protector.

“Stay your hand, lass.” It is a dwarf, as gruff as his race can be, with a beard blacker than coal and eyes like orange pinpricks under a blood-red hood. The full effect of his face is like burning embers in a pile of black ash.

“He should die,” Valeera says, looking back at the man under her blade. “He is the _worst_ kind of man.”

The dwarf eases his grip on her wrist, and she pulls her arm away. He nods, also considering the man at her mercy. “To be sure, to be sure, lass,” he says. “He’s a crook, a thief, and probably a murderer. He’s been a one-man crime spree in port towns all over Azeroth, and I’ve been running after him for months to put a stop to it.”

“And I’ve caught him for you,” Valeera says. “I’ll _execute_ his sentence as well, if you like.”

The dwarf laughed. “Yes, well. He’d have been _caught_ as you say when he stepped off the boat in Stormwind, where the ship is bound. I’ve sent word ahead for a party to be ready at the dock to apprehend him. Didn’t fancy taking him one-on-one here on the boat.” He laughs again. “Though you haven’t had any problem with him.”

“He’s drunk,” Valeera says.

The dwarf’s smile drops away, and he sets her with a crooked glare. “ _And_ you’re Valeera Sanguinar, the champion gladiator who stole her own freedom and became a hero of Stormwind. Perhaps that has something to do with your _prowess_ in a fight, as well, eh?”

Valeera holds his stare for a long moment, and then raises her dagger once more and drops it butt-first across the human’s forehead, knocking him against the planks and out cold. She rises to her full height, sheathes her blades, and looks down at the dwarf. “How do you know who I am?”

“You don’t get very far in my line of work,” he says, interrupting himself to grunt as he pulls a short length of rope from the pack on his waist, “without a _keen_ sense of observation _and_ identification.”

“And who _are_ you?” Valeera says, pulling up her hood again to hide her race and watching as the dwarf binds the man’s ankles and wrists.

“That’ll hold him, I think,” he says as he stands with a groan and claps his hands together. “Now why don’t you and I move below deck? I’m soaked to my socks, and wouldn’t mind a stiff drink as well.”

Valeera pulls her cloak more tightly around herself and looks out over the darkening ocean. “The storm isn’t weakening, is it?” she says. “But you ignored my question.”

He lowers his chin and grins at the deck. “Aye, forgive me,” he says. “I don’t easily share my name, but you might call me Coal.”

“I might have anyway.”

The dwarf laughs through his wide nose.

“SI:7, then?”

He nods, mild irritation at Valeera’s quick mind scuttling across his face. “Aye, aye,” he says, tugging his hood to keep it in place as a strong gust of wind sweeps across the deck. “Now, about that drink?”

 

Meanwhile, in Moonglade, the druid Laana Mistwhisperer lingers with a book on her balcony, though the hour is late and she ought to be in bed. In truth, she can’t keep her eyes on the book, because she’s tired, yes, but also because her mind pulls them away to gaze out over Lake Elune’ara and think of Valeera.

Laana laughs at herself self-consciously, pretending her fears are ridiculous, to say nothing of the childish affection she has for Valeera. She’s worried about the Blood Elf, and she hasn’t been off her mind long enough to finish reading even one page of the tome on her lap. She closes the book and sets it on the railing and leans beside it to look out over the lake. It shines under a clear night sky, hardly a breeze to ripple the reflections of millions of points of light, stretched into fine lines of silver up and down its surface.

She’s lived alone in this house for a thousand years, since she gave up adventuring throughout Azeroth and instead took up meditation, reading, writing, and prayer as her primary pastimes. In all those years, she almost always went to bed alone. She’d never taken any oath of celibacy; such oaths often proved detrimental to druids. Indeed, a physical connection with another living being could provide the astute druid with tremendous insight into natural magic.

Still, Laana has found her previous sexual relationships more of a distraction after the initial animalistic engagement, and in recent centuries, she’s preferred to avoid them. Her feelings for Valeera came as much as a surprise to her as they had to the Blood Elf girl.

Valeera had been living with Laana for only a couple of weeks, but they’d been together every waking moment during those weeks. Laana knew at once of course that the girl was beautiful; her prayer and meditation didn’t make her blind, nor immune to such feelings, and Valeera was as lovely to look at as Lake Elune’ara under the starry sky. Laana told her so as the elf women walked together along the lake’s south shore long after dark, long after both of them should have been in bed—their _separate_ beds in Laana’s house—yet neither seemed to want to return to the house.

“You’re mad,” Valeera said, but a smile crept to her lips—they so often pouted, looking angry and put-upon.

“Perhaps I am,” Laana admitted, and she wrapped her long-fingered hand around Valeera’s, so slight in comparison. “Is this alright?”

Valeera nodded beside her, and her cheeks glowed in the moonlight. “I don’t mind,” she said.

That walked like that, hand in hand, in silence around the lake, past the Barrow Dens, where druids entered the Emerald Dream, and when they passed Silva Fil’naveth at her hippogriff stand at the foot of the mountains at Moonglade’s south end, Laana waved briefly and felt her cheeks warm when the flight mistress waved back and smiled. They walked on, past Remulos’s shrine and into Nighthaven, long ago sleeping, only a pair of drowsy Cenarion guards roaming the village at that hour. Even as they climbed the stony path to Laana’s house, neither elf spoke, and when they stepped onto the porch, they still said nothing. But just inside the doorway, they turned to face each other and laced their fingers together.

Laana looked down at Valeera’s face, smiling again, and now the apples of her cheeks were as pink as the sky at sunrise. Her eyes shined, still green of course, but somehow more beautiful than any pair Laana had ever beheld. The druid slipped one hand free of Valeera’s and ran a finger along the line of her jaw. She was striking. So _lovely_. Laana could wait no longer, and there in the doorway, she lowered her lips to Valeera’s and kissed her.

The Blood Elf stretched up on her toes to meet her, and after a moment laid her hands on her shoulders, then clasped them behind her neck. She hummed into her kiss, sending a vibrating chill up and down Laana’s body, and for the first time in a thousand years, Laana shared her bed that night and woke up beside her lover in the morning. Now, though, she is alone once more, and it has only taken six months of Valeera to undo centuries of practiced solitude.

Laana cannot imagine descending the stairs and settling down to sleep alone, without Valeera beside her.

She is about to take her seat again, take up her book again, sighing as she lifts it from the railing and flips through its pages to find where she left off, when she catches the glint of firelight down in Nighthaven. Laana squints into the darkness and sees it again, coming out from under the pitched roofs of the shops in the center of town. It moves along the planks, and then onto the stony path toward the lake.

_A torch_ , Laana realizes, and it’s heading for her house. Laana leaves the book on the railing and hurries down the stairs to watch from the porch. It’s no entourage this time, no mad collection of star-struck elves following their adored leaded. It’s one woman in a plain golden-brown dress, walking alone and quickly.

“Laana!” the woman calls, her voice melodious and familiar.

“Herald Moonstalker?” Laana says, jogging off the porch and halfway along the path to meet the Darnassus crier on her way up the slope. “What are you doing here, and at such a late hour?”

The herald is breathless from her journey, and she passes her torch to Laana. “I’m sorry, Laana. I know it’s late.”

Laana takes her elbow and waves the torch so it goes out. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping. Come inside and sit.”

“Thank you,” the herald says, letting herself be led along the path and up the porch steps. She drops into the settee just inside the door and smiles up at her hostess. “I’m really very sorry, but it was urgent I see you _before_ sunrise.”

“Why, Moonstalker?” Laana asks, sitting beside her and angling to face her.

The other woman takes her hands in her lap. “I received a message at sunset,” she says, lowering her chin, her eyes wide with the dramatic thrill of her mission. The herald so rarely has the opportunity to leave Darnassus, after all. “I am to collect you and lead you to a hidden portal here in Moonglade.”

“A _portal_?” Laana says. “I’ve been all over Moonglade, dear herald, and I’ve never seen a portal.”

The herald nods slowly, leaning back a bit on the bench, her face dark with mystery. “It’s well hidden,” she says. “The message was very clear, very specific.”

“I see,” Laana says, rising from the bench. “And who _sent_ this message?”

“That’s just the thing, Laana,” Moonstalker says. “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

Laana laughs lightly, shaking her head. “And why are we just _trusting_ some anonymous message you got, Moonstalker?”

“I might have disregarded the message,” the Herald admits, “written it off as a joke, or even malfeasance. I might have asked for help from the city guards in tracking down its author. But then I reached the end of the instructions.” She gazes into the middle distance, as if her mind is far, far away.

“And?” Laana says, taking the herald’s hands once more to snap back her attention. “What did it say?”

The herald slowly pulls her gaze back, and her mind back from wherever it had gone, and finds Laana before her. Herald Moonstalker’s voice is famous for its ideal timbre and its rich, enchanting tone, so when she next speaks, the words sound as lovely as they possibly could in this world. Still, a chill moves through Laana’s body as if Ysera herself has whispered at her ear: “ ‘Cross the world, learn from it, and draw upon its own strength, the better to guide Kalimdor's health and safety throughout the future.’”

“A druid, then,” Laana says, rising from her crouch in front of the herald.

“Yes,” the herald says.

“And a druid with tremendous knowledge of our history,” Laana adds, turning her back on Moonstalker. “Not some newbie shape-shifter looking for kicks.”

“As you say,” the herald agrees. She appears at Laana’s side and takes her arm. “I’m afraid there’s more.”

“Yes?”

“The note also mentions . . . Valeera Sanguinar.” The herald’s face betrays quite a lot, for though she is quite well regarded in her abilities to gather information, her ability to hide information is not so great.

“What do you know of Valeera?”

“Only that she has been called away,” the herald says, “and that you love her a great deal.”

Laana nods. “What does it say about Valeera?”

“That she is in danger,” the herald continues, “as well as the King of Stormwind, who never summoned her at all, and potentially so are we all.”

Laana turns from the herald and looks out over the lake. “This is not the way I would have like this visit to go, Moonstalker.”

“We haven’t visited in far too long,” the herald agrees, putting a gentle hand on the druid’s shoulder. “Will you come with me now?”

The lake seems to glow silvery-blue in the light of the moon, but soon the sun will appear over the mountains between Moonglade and Winterspring. “Yes,” she agrees. “Lead the way, Moonstalker. I’ve known you our whole lives, and I trust you completely.”

The herald squeezes her shoulder and smiles as Laana reaches for the unlit torch by the door.

“Don’t bother bringing that,” Moonstalker says. “It won’t do us any good where we’re going.”

The herald leads Laana off the porch and farther along the lake path to the steep, moss-covered bank. They hold hands, descending toward the water, and wade into the shallows of the lake’s north end.

“Um,” Moonstalker says, “I will need your help now, Laana.”

“Of course,” Laana says, lowering herself into the clear, cool water. Her druidic robes vanish into a shimmer of light, and in an instant she has transformed in to her aquatic travel form. She cannot speak in this form, but as she bobs near the lake’s surface, only her dorsal fin protruding from the water, the herald takes her meaning, grabs a lungful of air, and holds on tight.

Laana has always loved the water. It’s why she built her house right on the shore of the lake, her front door steps from the shallows. Tonight, with Moonstalker’s strong hands wrapped around her fin and with her face pressed against her flank, Laana speeds through the water, letting the herald guide her by gently nudging her fin as they go. Before long—and Laana must remind herself that Moonstalker is holding her breath, unable as Laana is to breathe naturally in her porpoise-like form—the herald has led Laana to a dark underwater cavern, far to the east along a trench Laana has never fully explored. After a short time inside the cavern, Laana finds herself in shallow water, and then stepping in her Night Elf form onto a pebble beach in an underground cave as her robes rematerialize upon her.

“It’s lovely,” she marvels, leading the gasping herald out of the water by the hand.

Moonstalker shakes herself dry and pauses to ring her hair. “I’m almost surprised we found the way,” she says, pacing beside Laana as they move deeper into the underground cave. “The mysterious druid’s directions were _very_ good.”

Laana nods and continues slowly on. The women instinctively take each other’s hand as the darkness grows, but ahead Laana sees a bluish glow from around the bend. “The portal is close.”

As if in reply, there comes rumbling from ahead—almost a growl.

“I fear suddenly I’ve led you someplace very dangerous,” Moonstalker says, shrinking closer against the druid.

Laana quiets her and pats her arm. “Wait here,” she says, and she drops to the cold ground, sliding into her silent feline form and pulling a cloak of gray shadow around her. In this way, she prowls forward and steps lightly around the bend.

_The portal_ is _there,_ she thinks, but between her and the portal stand its ancient guards: a pair of elementals, water and stone. _Fitting_ , the druid thinks, _that this portal hidden in a stone room beneath Lake Elune’ara would be protected by these two, but perhaps more than I can defeat alone, and the herald is no fighter._

As quietly as she arrived, Laana retreats and returns to her elf form beside the herald. “It’s not safe for you beyond this point,” Laana whispers close to the herald’s ear. “Can you make it to the surface on your own?”

Herald Moonstalker nods. “I know where the air bubbles are along the bottom,” she says, reminding Laana at once of her millennia-ago youth, before she’d learned the aquatic travel form. “I can make it, and I’d better hurry. It is nearly dawn, and my morning cry will be missed.”

“Then forgive me, Herald,” Laana says, taking the herald’s hands in hers, “for I must ask another favor of you, and you will likely miss your heralding for several days—perhaps forever.”

Moonstalker’s face in the dim blue glow of the nearby portal falls, her mouth open in surprise, her silver eyes glowing like the moon, her green hair nearly black in the darkness. “What would you have me do?”

“I don’t know who wrote that note,” Laana says, almost pleading, “but if we truly are all in danger, and if Valeera truly is in danger, I’d ask for others before _me_ to lend a hand.”

Moonstalker shrugs a bit. “That had occurred to me,” she admits.

Laana nods firmly. “Good,” she says. “Then please. Go to the surface, and take a hippogriff. Have you any money?”

“A bit,” Moonstalker says. “I’ve saved a little over the years. I don’t spend it much.”

“Then spend some now,” Laana goes on, “on a flight to Theramore, and speak there to Jaina Proudmoore.”

“Will she see me?”

“I think so,” Laana says, though she’s never met the renowned human mage, “if you mention Valeera and Varian Wrynn. But if she won’t speak to you, from Theramore you can board a boat for the Eastern Kingdoms. You must find an ally there.”

The herald gasps. “I’ve never been across the Great Sea, Laana.”

Laana takes her in both hands and holds her steady. “With any luck, you won’t cross the sea anytime soon. Go to Jaina. Tell her what you’ve told me. Tell her Valeera, and very likely the King of Stormwind as well, is in trouble.”

Moonstalker closes her eyes and shakes her head, as if to clear the clutter. “Why not just go to the high priestess? Surely _she_ would provide as much aid as anyone could want?”

It almost pains Laana to explain. She’s known Moonstalker for so long—since before the title Herald became affixed to her name—and she knows how much love she carries in her heart for Tyrande, and for Elune. But it will not do to keep her in the dark, not if she is to speak to Jaina on Laana’s behalf.

“Moonstalker,” Laana says, keeping her voice as calm and caring as she can—a skill she’s developed well these last six months with her Blood Elf house guest, “it was Tyrande herself who delivered the message for Valeera. If she is indeed in danger, I am not . . . comfortable going to Tyrande for aid.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I’m afraid I _do,”_ Laana says.

It’s clear Herald Moonstalker won’t believe such talk about her esteemed leader, but sets her jaw and squeezes Laana’s hands. “I will go to Jaina,” she says. “But please, Laana. _Be careful._ For once I will keep my mouth shut about your whereabouts and my destination, but if word were to get around that you’ve spoken _ill_ of Her Worship . . .”

“It won’t,” Laana says. “Now go, and be like the wind. I believe something terrible is about to happen, and we don’t have much time to stop it.”

They embrace, the herald lingers a moment afterward to look deeply into Laana’s eyes as if asking, _Must we really do this? Shouldn’t we just go back to bed and pretend this never happened?_

But Laana holds her gaze firmly and commands, “Go,” and then drops to the ground to prowl in her feline form to the portal beyond, slipping carefully between the raging elementals and then into the shimmering blue sphere.

_It’s a feeling like falling, but being yanked quickly upward at the same time. It tucks you inside out, and it pulls you till you’re a thin film of yourself, translucent and stretched like a new skin to cover the whole of the world. You are everyone and everywhere and everything, and an instant later, you’re no one and nothing at all._

And then it’s over.

Laana steps out of the shimmering sphere at the base of a lodge, styled so much like the buildings of her home city of Darnassus, but clear across the world at the southern end of the ancient realm of Quel’Thalas. She pads quickly to the shade of a nearby tall evergreen, browned only by the taint of the scourge that has ravaged so much of the old kingdom of Lordaeron.

_I am out of my depth,_ she thinks, the same fear that had Herald Moonstalker so nervous moments ago, and Laana has half a mind to sprint back into that portal, return to Moonglade and never leave again, but the glowing sphere vanishes, leaving behind only the drab browns that now dominate the Eastern Plaguelands, as this part of Lordaeron is now known.

To her right, the Quel’Lithien Lodge stills stands, its residents some of the last of the High Elves, exiled from Kalimdor a lifetime ago, ancestors of her darling Valeera’s Blood Elves.

_The elves of this continent turned their backs on the druid ways centuries ago,_ Laana knows. _Could one of them have sent for me?_ It seems impossible.

She prowls carefully out of cover, holding the shadows around her like a cloak still, and pads silently toward the lodge. From above, a crow caws as if calling to her. She peers up through the branches to find it, and it caws again, closer this time. When it takes wing, Laana drops her cloak of shadows and gives chase. It flies low, so she can keep it in her sites, and after a moment alights upon a short stretch fence at the side of a rough-trod road. She can see now the ornament dangling from its neck—this is no ordinary crow.

Laana rises from her feline form and her Night Elf nature returns. “Ishnu-alah, Broll Bearmantle,” Laana says, for indeed the figure now seating on the old fence post is the ancient antlered druid himself, and he says to her, “Elune-adore, and may she save us all from her followers.”

Laana steps closer, and Broll drops down from the fence to embrace her. “Tell me what’s happened.”

“A great deal, young one,” Broll says, “and I’m afraid I’ve managed to put _you_ in the center of it all.”

 

 

 

Far to the south and a day later, a small seafaring ship docks in Stormwind, and the weather is fine: the sky over the great human city-state is blue and expansive, dotted with high white clouds like cotton balls for the gods. At the front of the queue to disembark stands a shirtless human, bound at his wrists and ankles, called Rustigard Bork. Holding him by the elbow is a dwarf in a blood-red cloak, and at _his_ side, a slim and mysterious figure taller by two feet at least.

“Keep the hood up,” Coal says as the ship bumps gently against its moorings and the humans, Night Elves, and dwarves aboard the ship shuffle in an impatient clump toward the gangway. “ _I_ know you’re a friend to the King, but the rabble we’re likely to pass between here and the Keep do not.”

Valeera nods and pulls her cloak more tightly around her middle, hiding her blades and slim form under its heavy cloth bulk. On the dock, she spots the security outfit Coal told her about, ready to take Rusty off his hands and to the famous prison in Stormwind’s heart, the Stockade.

“Stay close.” He puts his hand on her arm and together they step off the boat onto the slippery wide dock of lower Stormwind. He then bellows in his roughest, dwarfest bellow, “Here he is, lads. Don’t let him get the advantage on you. He’s wily and strong.” The crew of Stormwind guards roughly take Rusty off Coal’s hands, and together he and his Blood Elf guest slip quietly along the dock while onlookers notice instead the at-large criminal finally been brought to justice.

“I must say,” Coal says when they’ve moved a bit away from the ruckus, “strange that we in SI have not heard anything about the King’s summons of . . . well, _you_.”

Valeera only nods and sets her gaze high, toward the towers and walls of the city’s western face.

Coal sighs heavily, like a hound dismissing a bit of turf, and urges her to the high, wide stairs that lead up from the docks to the city proper. At the top, rather than joining the throngs of travelers moving into the Canal District—and from there, perhaps to the Trade District, or the Cathedral, or the Old Town—Coal takes Valeera along the stone path through the cemetery, beyond the pond fed by the canals inside the city walls, and along the pumpkin patch to the Dwarven District.

“That was some route,” Valeera says as they step together through the stone arch that serves as the city’s unofficial rear gate and into the odorous chaos of what might be called Little Ironforge. “Did you think I needed a tour of the back gardens?”

Coal grunts.

“Or were you planning to take me to meet your mom?” Valeera adds with a smirk, nodding toward the entrance to the Gnomish Deeprun Tram. “Because I gotta tell you, Coal. I’m not big on trains.”

The dwarf grunts again as the peculiar pair weaves between gnomes and dwarves, the occasional human crouched among them, straining to make sense of some gnome’s mechanical mental meanderings or some dwarf’s ale-infused northern brogue. Over the heads of the crowd—and it was fairly easy for Valeera, being a full foot taller than most residents of the Dwarven District, to see over the heads—Valeera could see through the arch ahead and into the familiar Canal District where it led up to the magnificent stone stairway up to Varian’s Keep.

“I didn’t think I’d be back here so soon,” Valeera says as the noon sun glints off the clear water of the canal and brings a tear to her eyes. She and the dwarf pass through and onto the cobblestone path along the canal. “Do you know how many evenings I stood just there”—she points at a spot at the far end of the walkway across the canal—“hidden in the shadows of the shop, just hoping for some sort of _trouble_ I could help to settle?”

“Aye,” says Coal. “We don’t miss much up in Stormwind Intelligence, lass.”

Valeera hummed. “Then you know why I _left_ Stormwind, as well.”

The dwarf eyes her from under his hood. “Aye,” he says. “A bit of it. ‘Tweren’t idle gossip, mind you.”

“Course not.”

Coal grumbled something of self-righteous indignation in the back of his throat. Valeera laughed. “’Tweren’t,” he insisted. “When a Blood Elf in the King’s unofficial employ is taken with your particular affliction, lass . . . well, that becomes SI:7 business.”

“I suppose it would.” Valeera stops at the base of the steps up to the Keep. “They’ve made some changes.”

“Aye,” Coal says, starting up the steps. “The renovations after the Cataclysm were . . . significant. But you’ll find it’s all quite familiar inside.”

Beyond the grand front entrance—which is indeed far more ostentatious than it was in Valeera’s day—the Keep is quite familiar. Once they pass the guards, who line the hundreds of steps as if a coronation is about to take place, the old Keep is there underneath, with its stuffy library, airy little garden, and sparse throne room.

Valeera whispers to her escort as they step inside and she finds Varian with her eyes at the back of the room, slouching royally in his throne and deep in counsel with the head of his guard—Marshall, she thinks his name might be—“I haven’t seen Lo’gosh in almost a year, Coal. Am I to kneel, or . . .”

“By the _gods,_ Marshall,” Varian says, rising from his recline and throwing open his arms. “Do my eyes deceive me?”

Valeera’s cheeks go hot and she pulls back her hood.

“It _is_ you!” The King hops down from his throne, dropping a quill and parchment in Marshall’s surprised arms. “Anduin! Come in here! You’ll never guess who’s back!”

“I am happy to see you too, Highness,” Valeera says, doing her best to maintain protocol and etiquette, but Varian has none of it. When he barrels toward her, his boots thundering across the throne room’s marble floor, he is more Lo’gosh than she’s seen him in a very long time indeed, and when he takes her around her waist in his massive hands and lifts her from the ground to spin her, his mouth open wide with joy at the sight of her, all protocol is lost. Valeera laughs and shrieks and returns his embrace around the neck.

“Valeera Sanguinar!” It is Anduin, come in from the library. He leaves his tomes on the table beside the archway, and Valeera pulls one arm from the King to embrace the Prince. “Are you well?”

It is a nicety. The sort of question one asks without expecting a sincere reply. But as the words hang in the air, Valeera is sure she’s not the only one of them—the King, the Prince, and even Coal—thinking how much more there is to that question when it comes to Valeera’s _wellness._

“I’m getting there, Prince,” she says. “I’m getting there.” She turns again to the King, and though the smile doesn’t quite fall from her face, her mind is troubled. “It’s interesting, Highness, that you are obviously _surprised_ to see me.”

“And shouldn’t I be?” King Varian replies, his smile as big and bright as the sky above Stormwind. “As far as I knew when I woke this morning, you were recuperating with your cousins on the World Tree off Kalimdor.”

Valeera pulls in her bottom lip and turns her back on him as she reaches inside her cloak and the slim pack she wears on her back to pull out the scroll. Its seal is gone—no doubt swept out the front door of Laana Mistwhisperer’s home days ago—but the striking and aggressive handwriting is plain enough. She unrolls it and presents it to the King. “Your hand, is it not?”

The King’s smile falters, fades, and drops away completely as his eyes scan the scroll, and scan it again, and again, as if looking for the words that aren’t there. “I didn’t write this.” He passes it to his son.

“Perhaps,” Coal says, stepping cautiously into the circle of his social and governmental betters, “you wrote it _before—_ when Lo’gosh and King Varian were two distinct men.”

“I like your thinking, agent,” the King says as he turns to pace toward his throne and back, “but I have all the memories of _both_ those men even now. If either of my halves had written this missive, I’d know it.”

“Maybe you’d better give it here, lad,” Coal says, reaching one hairy hand toward Anduin. “I think the rest of SI:7 will want to have a look at a _forged order_ calling Valeera back to Stormwind.”

Anduin rolls the scroll and pulls it back suddenly. “With your permission, father,” he says, turning to the King, “I’d like to first bring this to the attention of High Priestess Laurena.”

“Laurena?” Varian says as he slouches once more onto his throne. “What for? She knows little of matters of state, and certainly nothing of _espionage_.”

Anduin’s face twists briefly in thought as he brings the scroll out once more and opens it, considers the words. “It’s probably nothing,” he says, “and I’ll hand it over to SI:7 the moment she’s seen it, but I feel like she might have some . . . _insight_.”

The King sets his son under a long and considerate gaze, and finally says, “Fine. Run it over to her now yourself, and take two of the Keep guards with you. No one must handle the scroll aside from yourself and the High Priestess. Understood?”

“Of course, Father,” Anduin says as he runs from the throne room, his youth and exuberance speeding him along. The King signals to the guards at the door, who follow him as quickly as they can manage in their shining ceremonial armor.

Valeera paces the throne room, her eyes on the floor. “I don’t like it, sire,” she says. “Why would someone forge a request for _me_ to come _here_?”

Coal leans on the edge of the war table in the center of the room, and he growls in thought. “The _curse_ of the Blood Elves is no secret,” he says, “and _your_ personal struggle perhaps only slightly less so.”

“You think someone meant her to come to harm?” the King says, leaning forward in his throne.

The dwarf tosses his shoulders. “The journey alone might have brought out the worst in her,” he says, then throws a glance at Valeera. “No offense meant, lass.”

Valeera smirks at him. “He’s right,” she admits. “As I said, I’m getting there, but I’m still _unwell._ If that Rustigard Bork character had even a stitch of enchanted armor, if his sword had been pulled off the bloodied corpse of a felled Death Knight, or even a Paladin . . .” She can’t finish the train of thought, but the two men understand implicitly: Any taste of magic might reignite Valeera’s dangerous addiction. She shivers and pulls her cloak closed against the chill in her mind.

“What enemies do you have, lass?” Coal asks, his eyes narrow and his brow furrowed.

She shrugs. “I lost count when I was still living on the streets of Fairbreeze Village,” she says, tossing off the question. “Can any of us count our enemies?”

The King nods slowly and hums in agreement. He, too, has as many enemies as friends. “I see your point,” he says, “and truthfully this _ruse_ hardly seems like the most efficient way to get to Valeera.”

“Then what?” The Blood Elf stops her pace behind the King’s throne and kicks the wall with the toe one sturdy boot, leaving a scuff.

“Perhaps,” says Coal, rising from his place at the table, “the idea wasn’t to get Valeera _here_ precisely.”

“The forged note mentions _here,_ precisely,” Valeera says.

The King silences her with a wave of his hand. “What are you getting at, agent?”

“Valeera,” the dwarf says, striding toward her, “who else in this world might have convinced you to leave Moonglade prematurely? Anyone?”

“Perhaps Anduin, the prince,” Valeera says after a moment’s thought. “Certainly Broll. Garona, mother of Med’an. We’ve fought together.”

The dwarf nods. “A handful of people, perhaps,” he says, “but none with the _distinct stationery_ and _royal command_ of My Liege.”

“Certainly not,” the King says. He stands and crosses to the dwarf. “Then you’re suggesting Stormwind and I are . . .”

“Incidental necessities,” the dwarf finishes. “Whoever forged this edict wanted Valeera Sanguinar _out of Moonglade._ ”

Valeera’s skin goes cold as the weight of the dwarf’s theory sinks into her heart and belly. “But . . . why?”

The dwarf shrugs, and drums his fingers on the heavy wooden tabletop. “I haven’t figured that part out quite yet.”

“Does someone plan to attack Moonglade?” King Varian says. “It’s been a neutral zone for centuries, the peaceful home of the druids—aside from the rare visit by that demonic dog.”

Valeera nods absently. “Omen,” she says. “Shook the whole damn house when he came grumbling out of his _hole_.” She starts then, thinking of her lover in her little house on the shore of Lake Elune’ara. She threw quite a little fit when Omen’s stomping through Moonglade knocked her favorite glass bauble from its shelf and sent it to the floor to shatter. “Laana.”

“What?” King Varian says.

“Hrm?” Coal says.

Valeera spins to face them both, standing side by side now in front of Varian’s throne. “Laana Mistwhisperer, the druid who . . . nursed me back to health and helped to _wean_ me off magic by feeding me careful and lovingly with _natural magic_ from her own spirit. She is in danger, I feel it.”

“You’re sure?” the King says. “I’ve never heard of her. Who would want her to come to harm?”

Valeera can’t answer: she doesn’t know. It doesn’t rightly make sense. Laana is no world-mover. She is a modest and beautiful druid, living a quiet life. Her adventures and quests are behind her now, lost in the echo of her impetuous youth. The Blood Elf shakes her head. “No one,” she says, her voice soft and faraway. “No one could possibly.”

The dwarf and man exchange a glance, both struck by Valeera’s tone. She throws off her hood and blazes at them, “Still, I _know_ I should be with her. Please, Varian. If there is any shred of the Lo’gosh I love inside you still, _call_ your mages and have them summon a portal for me to Darnassus. I can be at her side by nightfall.”

Varian sets his jaw. “As you say,” he says. “Quickly. We’ll each take a royal mount. My guards will clear the way to the tower in the Mage District.” He whistles, and Marshall salutes and runs out of the throne room to grant the King’s wish.

Valeera finds she is shaking, and she crosses her arms beneath her cloak. Her eyes burn. Her temples ache. When the dwarf clears his throat, King Varian seems to wake from his rage and puts an arm around Valeera. She leans against him and lets herself cry.

“No harm will come to the druid, Valeera,” he promises, his voice rough, familiar, and caring. “I promise.”

Valeera would like to believe him.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The herald on her quest; the Prince meets Laurena; the druids fly south; the mystery deepens

Herald Moonstalker wears a heavy wool cloak. She hasn’t had need for a warm cloak in centuries, as she hasn’t left Darnassus itself more than a handful of times, and even then only to step through the portal to Rut’theran village to deliver or take a message—once to go fishing with Astaia. But she’s heard Theramore carries a damp chill all year round, that it’s a vile swamp where the temperature can swing wildly from a muggy swelter to a bone-drenching cold in a matter of hours. So the herald woke the shopkeeper Daeolyn Summerleaf an hour before sunrise and couldn’t even pay full price, but the title of herald brings with it some perks, if very few: primarily, there isn’t a Night Elf in Azeroth who would call the herald a stranger, nor refuse her a favor. When it became clear that the herald was in terrible need, Daeolyn asked no further questions, and in fact gave her a heavy sack full of cornbread and moonberry juice.

“For the trip,” Daeolyn said, pressing the bag into the herald’s reluctant arms. “You are going on a trip?” In the end, Moonstalker accepted, didn’t reveal _too_ much about where she was going, and didn’t put up much of a fight when Silva offered to send her off to Theramore for free.

The hippogriff flies low over the swamps of Dustwallow Marsh, and the powerful smell of the place wafts up from the earth. Moonstalker has none of the natural inclination toward a real appreciation for nature, not like her druidic friends—not like Laana. But she is a Night Elf, after all, and with her race come certain traits: a respect for everything that grows, and for everything green, and to be sure, the marsh is full of life.

Herald Moonstalker, however, is happy to appreciate it from above, and thankful when she sees the winding, flooded paths that weave through the marshes not to be traveling on foot. She is a city woman, of course, and while Darnassus hasn’t the cold and ostentatious beauty of Stormwind nor the stone and steel sturdiness of Ironforge—she’s heard—it does offer certain comforts that an elf living in a place like _this_ would certainly come to miss.

The hippogriff winds between wide sprawling trees and crumbling towers of stone—they look to be remnants of a once-greater human settlement here in Dustwallow Marsh—as it approaches Theramore Isle. Moonstalker can see it ahead now through the misty rain. She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her cloak, and as the hippogriff swoops up and over the huge wall of the city on the sea, her hood flies off. She sets down close to the docks alongside a red-bearded dwarf, his bald head shining with rainwater, his beard braided neatly and well. “Welcome to Theramore Isle, Night Elf,” he says as the herald climbs off her mount.

“Ishnu-alah,” Moonstalker says, nodding in lieu of a full bow. The roar of the sea under this growing storm threatens to drown her out, so she leans closer to the stout little man and says at his ear, “I’m afraid I don’t know my way around. Can you help me?”

“Aye, not much to our island, lass,” the dwarf says, stroking the length of his beard braid with both hands. “’Course, I cannot leave my _post_ here minding the gryphons, or I’d be more’n happy to lead you anywhere you happen to need to go.”

“Well, that’s very _kind_ of you,” the herald bellows back, thankful for her years of practice calling out to all of Darnassus. The dwarf for his part seems to have rather a natural knack for vocal volume. “I’m sure I could find my way if you’ll only point me in the right direction. I’m looking for Jaina Proudmore, the mage.”

“Oh, the mage is it?” he says, pulling off his blue-tinted glasses. His eyes glimmer like the sea itself. “Yes, I think I’ve heard of her.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Moonstalker says.

He pats her arm. “Aye, lass. I am a bit.” He turns and replaces his glasses, and the points into the mist of the darkening sky. “Can you see it from here, lass?”

“I don’t see anything,” the herald admits. The dwarf pulls his glasses off and hands them to her. They slide right down her nose till she holds them at one ear, but she can manage, and then . . .yes, there it is. “I see it now. A tower, set on the hill there. Is it . . . is it glowing at the top?”

The dwarf opens his hand, and she returns his glasses. “Aye, it often is,” he confirms. “Not just a trifling of _arcane_ magic going on up there, to be sure.”

“I see,” Moonstalker says. “And Jaina Proudmoore, she resides in the tower.”

“Aye, lass,” the dwarf says as he turns from her to attend to another customer. “She’s there most days, and most nights, as well.”

“Thank you, kind dwarf,” Moonstalker says, bowing gently and pulling up her hood. _The tower can’t be very far,_ she thinks as she starts out against the driving rain. The air here smells of the sea, just like back in Rut’theran village, but somehow richer, heavier, muskier, and the rain and gray clouds this afternoon are so low and thick that it might be almost any hour of the day.

Moonstalker Herald presses on, holding her cloak closed at the neck with one hand, holding her hood in place with the other. She passes downtrodden guards and a man mumbling to himself, leaning against the wall of the shuttered blacksmith shop. Moonstalker walks faster.

A trio of archers train at the foot of the tower, firing arrows into targets even in this downpour. Moonstalker jogs the last twenty paces into the tower, and in the warm dry of its first floor, she pulls off her cloak and shakes it dry.

“Who are you?” peeps a nearby voice.

Moonstalker Herald looks around, but finds no one.

“Down here!” the voice says again, and the herald looks down to find a gnome. She wears her pink hair in pigtails, and when Moonstalker finds her, she flicks on a smile bright and big enough to light the dark. “Hi!”

“Hello,” the herald says, leaning over, hands on her knees to better speak to the little woman. She’s met gnomes before, of course. Now and then one arrives in Darnassus. But their appearance still amuses her, though she’s a bit embarrassed to admit it. “I don’t suppose _you’re_ Jaina Proudmoore.”

The gnome covers her mouth and laughs. “I am the lady’s apprentice,” she says, and she dips into a tremendous and elegant bow. “Kinndy Sparkshine’s the name.”

“I’m pleased to me know you, Kinndy Sparkshine,” the herald says. “And I am Herald Moonstalker, of Darnassus.”

“Kinda outside your heralding territory, ain’t ya?” the gnome squeaks.

“Rather,” says Moonstalker, straightening. “I have an urgent message for Jaina Proudmoore, however, and could not send another messenger in my place. Is she free to talk?”

“Not generally,” Kinndy says with a toss of her hands. “But I will speak to her, and perhaps she will see you.”

“Thank you,” Moonstalker says with a nod. As the gnome starts up the stairs, she remembers and calls after her, “Oh! If you would, please tell her _Valeera Sanguinar_ and _King Varian Wrynn_ may be in danger!”

“The King and his hero?” Kinndy says, stopping at the first landing. “Oh my, oh my. I will tell her!” With that, she runs up the long and twisting stairs.

 

The herald is kept waiting for some time. At first, she paces the small ground floor, idly opening books lying on the table in the middle of the room and on the sidetables along the wall. After a short while, she finds a seat near the door and sits, but her impatience gets the better of her and she returns to pacing, practicing her speech to the ruler of Theramore Isle—if she ever comes down, or else calls her up.

The herald stops at the window and looks down into the village square. The rain has slowed, and the clouds have parted a bit, and Moonstalker can just make out the gryphon master still at his post, his blue shades glinting in the pale moonlight. Beyond the square is the sea, and somewhere out there across the wild ocean is the Eastern Continent.

“Oh, _please_ let her speak to me,” the herald mutters to herself, “or I shall have to board one of those ships and I may never see my home again!”

At that moment, the sound of footsteps on stairs echoes through the tower, and the herald hurries from the window to wait. It’s no gnome, she’s sure, but it neither sounds like the slippered feet the herald imagines on a mage called Jaina. These footsteps sound heavy, aggressive, and in a moment there appears not a gnome apprentice, nor a human mage, but a Night Elf woman, and she’s more terrifying than any Night Elf the herald has ever met—perhaps aside from Malfurion Stormrage himself.

“Identify yourself, _elf_ ,” the woman snaps as she steps off the stairs, brandishing a long sword shining with gold light. Her silver eyes hold the herald in what appears to be contempt—but that might just be the effect of the blade tattoos set upon them like fat battle scars. She wears her long blue hair in a fat braid, which hangs over her shoulder and down her chest.

“I am Herald Moonstalker,” she says, bowing deeply with a flourish, “of Darnassus.” She straightens again and adds, “I did not expect to find _kin_ here in Theramore.”

“Herald Moonstalker,” the elf says, halfway lowering her intimidating blade. “I should have recognized you.” She returns her bow, and sheathes her sword. “I was young the last time I saw you, heard your voice echoing throughout Darnassus.”

“Do I know you, warrior?”

“I am Pained,” she says, stepping closer. Her purple armor gleams as the sun breaks through the clouds outside, sending a ray of light in through the small window at Moonstalker’s back. “I have been Jaina Proudmoore’s bodyguard—assigned to her by the Tyrande herself—since the Battle for Mount Hyjal.”

“Then you’re right,” the herald says, letting herself smile a bit. “It has been a very long time indeed.”

“Ishnu-alah, Herald,” Pained says, extending her hands, and as the herald accepts them in hers, “I am very pleased to see you. Come up with me now, and the lady Jaina Proudmoore will see you.”

 

Across the Great Sea, Prince Anduin Wrynn waits in the paladins’ library inside the Cathedral of Light. High Priestess Laurena is perhaps the one person in all of Stormwind—Anduin’s father aside—who would keep the young prince waiting, but she is in conference with Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker and two of his paladins.

“I’m so sorry, Prince Anduin,” says Bishop Farthing, bowing his awkward crooked bow, and flashing his awkward crooked smile. “I _do_ hate to ask you to keep _waiting_ , but . . .”

“It’s fine, Excellency,” Anduin says, rising from his remarkably uncomfortable chair. “Perhaps I’m wasting my time anyway.”

The bishop leans closer. “Er, what _exactly_ did you want to speak to the High Priestess about, anyway? Perhaps I can be of some help.”

_My father the king did ask that I not share this scroll with anyone other than the high priestess,_ Anduin thinks, _but this is Bishop Farthing. Anything I discuss with her would surely be shared with him anyway._ He pulls the scroll from the leather satchel around his shoulder and hands it over to the bishop. “This note recalled Valeera Sanguinar to Stormwind.”

The bishop cocks his head and raises one eyebrow before snatching the scroll and unrolling it. He looks over its frayed edge and says, “So?”

“So my _father_ never wrote that scroll,” Anduin says, “and never sent it.”

The bishop hums and nods with understanding of the weight of the mystery. “I think the high priestess will want to see this right away. Just a moment.” With that, the bishop sweeps from the room, the scroll still in his hand.

“He might have given it _back_ first,” Anduin mutters to himself, slouching back into his chair and crossing his arms.

 

Meanwhile, not far away, Valeera Sanguinar and the King—along with SI:7 agent Coal—charge along the stony path beside the canal. At their head ride a pair of the King’s guards, one bugling in advance of His Highness, the other bellowing with a practiced tenor, “Move aside! Move aside for King Varian Wrynn!”

Valeera’s mount is a shining white mare, its mane long and well loved, and when she leans forward, urging the beast _onward, onward_ , it brushes her face and tickles her nose.

_I prefer Broll Bearmantle,_ she thinks, remembering how comfortable the two rightfully enemy elves got, her on his back in his travel form, hanging on to his night-black feather when he flew in his stormcrow form. But this mare is fast, and if it can get Valeera to a mage quickly, then it helps her to reach Laana, and she _must reach Laana._

“It’s there!” Coal shouts. He rides alongside on his own mount: a ram, in the way of his race, this one dusty black, much like the agent’s beard—and he points ahead an high into the sky, as if Valeera were a stranger to the city. Still, she follows his finger and marvels at the dizzying height of the Wizard’s Sanctum, its pinnacle continuously aglow with the blue and violet light of the arcane magic inside.

“I’ve never been up there,” she shouts back to Coal as the trio of riders—following the duo of criers—dodge into the archway between the canal and the Mage District.

“Aye, lass,” Coal says, quieter now, their voices echoing a bit under the stone arch. “Neither of I. Not looking forward to it.”

“If you’re _frightened_ , agent,” King Varian calls back to them over his shoulder, his wide and gleaming smile utterly mischievous, “you should wait at the bottom of the tower with my criers!”

Coal harrumphs and gives his ram the heel, and in a moment has passed the king. Varian, for his part, laughs.

“He’s a good one, Varian,” Valeera says, riding alongside the king. “It’s a shame I’m truly back to work here in Stormwind. He and I could do some good work for Intelligence.”

“I have no doubt,” the King says as they hold their horses near the base of the tower. “And what you say is true. Coal is one of our finest agents. He led a team into the Deadmines to bring me Edwin VanCleef’s head, and he’s been back more than once to find his conniving daughter.”

Valeera slides down from her horse and offers the king her hand. “You’ll get her, Varian.”

He sets his jaw and narrows his eyes. “Another time,” he says, and he takes Valeera by the arm. “Up we go. Quickly now.”

Together, following behind Coal, they charge up the ramp to the tower’s raised first floor. “Mages!” the king calls as they climb. “Your king requires your service at once!”

They reach the top, where the glowing green portal to the mage’s private study is always present, and find one young man in blue robes and a pointed hat, all but cowering at the desk farthest from the door.

“What is this?” the King thunders as he steps into the room. “Where are my mages? Who are you?”

“Your Highness,” the young mage says, rising from his seat in order to bow for his King. “Forgive me. I am Brann Farnsbottom, apprentice mage of the Sanctum.”

“Fransbottom,” Coal says, storming up to the lad and grabbing the front of his robes, “the King asked you another question: _where_ are the other _mages_?”

“Yes, Farnsbottom,” Valeera says, striding across the floor toward him. “The _good_ ones.”

“Ah, well,” says Brann, pushing his spectacles up his nose and stepping back from the offensive dwarf, “I supposed the King had been told, but perhaps not.”

“Told _what,_ lad?” Coal storms.

“The, err, other mages,” Brann stammers as he backs into a chair and sits quite accidentally, his glasses sliding clear off his face. “They’ve all been called way. Urgent business.” He drops to the floor to feel around for his spectacles, but it is Coal who swoops them up and slaps them back onto the mage’s face. “Thank you. I have the _scrolls_ around here someplace.”

“Forget the scrolls,” Valeera says, and she grabs the young mages by the back of his neck as he fumbles with the mess of parchment and pens on the table nearby, sending the lot of it to the floor. “Are you mage enough to create a _portal_ for me to get to Darnassus?”

“Oh, well,” the mage says, as Valeera spins him to face her and holds him by the lapel. His glasses nearly fall from his face, and he grabs for them and fumbles. “I mean. That is to say. A _portal_. Well. That’s very sophisticated and, well, I’ve been _trained,_ you understand, in the _arcane magics_ , and—”

_“Can you do it or not?!”_ Valeera roars.

“No!” he says back, closing his eyes as she raises her fist in anger.

She tosses him aside. “Useless.”

Brann pushes himself up from the floor. “I can create a portal to _Ironforge_ , if that would be of any help,” he offers, stammering. “Perhaps shorten your journey by a few days?”

Valeera dives for him, but Coal and the king catch her by the wrists. “He is not to blame, Valeera,” the king assures her, and in his fist he holds a bunch of scrolls collected from the piles on the floor. “Whoever sent these messages, perhaps, is.”

“Why?” Valeera says, spinning from the grasp of the men and grabbing up the scrolls. “What do they say?” She pulls one open at random and scans it, and then another, and another. They all tell her the same thing: some matter of great urgency—far from Stormwind and the Wizards’ Sanctum—calls away the King’s top mages. It’s happened a dozen times in the last fortnight. “Do you think the mages are in danger?”

Coal drops his ample bottom into a nearby chair and groans. “I fear, Valeera,” he says, “that the _mages_ for now are merely inconvenienced, while it is this tower that has been left defenseless.”

“The way _I_ have been called away,” Valeera says.

“But surely _Moonglade_ is not defenseless,” the King says. “Druids with power beyond imagining fill its halls and groves.”

“Again,” Coal says with a nasal sigh, “I haven’t figured that bit out yet.”

Valeera tosses the scrolls aside and stomps to the exit. “There must be another way,” she rants as she goes. “I will not give up on Laana so quickly.”

“Of course,” the king says, striding beside her. “My fastest ship will take you to Rut’theran village at once.”

Coal keeps his seat a moment, and finally calls after them: “It’s something to do with magic, sire! First the druids, now the arcane wizards! Mark my words well!”

 

There are other towers in Stormwind, though none with the pedigree or impressiveness of the Wizards’ Sanctum. One of them is a plain-looking guard tower that sticks up from the northwesternmost corner of the city-state’s foreboding wall at the north end of the new Stormwind docks. It’s unpatrolled more often than not, though a guard on gryphon-back will swoop over it every now and the—only an aerial attack on the city would be remotely possible from that approach, since any approaching ship would be spotted by the dock watchers at towers that rise up along the city’s western wall.

Today, though, a pair of stormcrows alight at the top of this tower, thankful for a sturdy perch after a long and arduous flight. They’ve not rested much since they flew out of the Eastern Plaguelands; their mission is that great. But they did stop briefly in Loch Modan at the top of Grizzlepaw Ridge. Laana, the less experience flyer of the two druids, pulled a skin of spring water from her back and took a long draft.

“I’m out of practice,” she said, offering the skin to Broll Bearmantle, who sat beside her, legs crossed and eyes closed.

He grunted in response and did not accept the drink. “Our trip is halfway done,” he said instead, “but I’m afraid this trip is merely the first leg in a much longer journey.”

Laana knew it to be true, but she hated to think of it. She was mostly interested in finding Valeera, making sure she hadn’t been sent right into a trap of some kind. “Can it be true?” she asked of her druid friend and mentor. “Can High Priestess Tyrande be planning something sinister as that?”

Broll nodded and grunted again and opened his eyes. “By Elune, and by the Creator, practitioners of the magic of Holy Light have _often_ looked upon the other schools of magic as lesser, as base, as even evil.”

“Some of them are,” Laana said, “right?”

“Fel magic,” Broll said. “Even Fel magic in and of itself is not purely evil. No power is either evil or good. It is the _user_ who gives magic its morality. Our High Priestess has often behaved _rashly_ , acting too quickly, too passionately, but this?” He shook his head mournfully. “It seems impossible. I’d like to believe she is not acting of her own free will.”

Laana nodded and stared into the middle distance, thinking of her home in Moonglade. If what Broll told her is correct, that home by now is burnt to ash by Holy Light. Indeed the whole of Moonglade is in ruins, sacrificed by the greatest priests and paladins in the name of the Holy Light of the Creator.

“The question is,” Broll went on, rising to his feet and taking his own skin of water from his pack, “who would aim to create an Azeroth in which only Holy Light magic existed, in which the Elemental shamans, arcane wizards, and druids had no power at all?”

“To say nothing of practitioners of dark magic,” Laana pointed out.

Broll hummed in thought, looking north from Grizzlepaw Ridge toward the strait between the continents of the Eastern Kingdom. “The Cathedral of Light in Stormwind may be part of this plot,” Broll said, “if that is indeed what it is, and any delay puts Stormwind itself—to say nothing of our friends there—in grave danger. We should take wing at once.”

Laana capped her skin and stowed it. “Alright,” she said. “I fly on for Valeera, and pray that when we find her, she is safe.”

“We will need her help,” Broll said, “as it may be that those of us whose power comes from _magic_ will be of very little help in the face of this foe.”

That was several hours ago, and now they watch Stormwind from their tower perch. “We mustn’t go about as we are,” Broll says. “I’m well known here as a practitioner of druidic magic, and your wolfhide robes make it clear you, too, are a druid.”

“Then what?” Laana says. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”

Broll nods, staring across the roofs of the city.

“I have it,” Laana says. “Wait here, and I’ll be back quickly.” She hops onto the ledge of the tower facing north, and takes the form of a stormcrow.

“Where are you going?” Broll snaps at her, but of course she can’t reply and merely caws at him and takes wing.

It’s not far from Stormwind City to Goldshire, the small hamlet just down the road, and he woods between the capital city and its closest, smallest neighbor are filthy with the local criminal element. Laana lands gracefully in a tree not far from Goldshire and takes her Night Elf form once again. At the base of a tree, a pair of thieves connive and count their pickings for the day. After a moment, one of them—the man—wanders off, no doubt in search of another purse to cut, leaving the woman alone.

“She’ll do fine,” Laana whispers to herself, and she drops from the tree, takes her cat form on the way down, and pounces. She hasn’t fought in a long time, but this small-time hooligan is no match for a druid with such deep and practiced training. The poor thing drops after two swipes, and Laana quickly strips her of her leather armor—and the handful of coppers she carries. In a moment—hidden in the shadows of the woods—Laana changes out of her wolfhide robes and into the plain leather garb of a novice. With Broll in travel form at her side, they’ll appear nothing more than a Night Elf hunter with her pet.

She flies quickly back toward the northwesternmost tower, and as she glides silently and high above the Cathedral of Light, she is loath to imagine what conspiracies are being hatched below at that very moment.

 

“Prince Anduin,” says High Priestess Laurena, dropping into a practiced curtsy. Her shining, honey colored hair falls in waves over her shoulders and chest, and her priestess robes—a brighter gold than her hair, and nearly as beautiful—split at the front just enough to expose her bare legs and netherweave slippers only briefly. “Bishop Farthing was quite polite breaking up my meeting with the paladins,” she says, a playful smile on her lips, as she sits across from the prince.

Anduin rises briefly and returns her bow, then sits again. “I hope he explained the urgency.”

“Indeed he did,” she says, placing the scroll in question on the table between them and unrolling it. She places a silver candle holder on one corner and a slim black book on the opposite one, holding it open so she can examine it better. “I think I know _why_ you thought to bring it to me.”

As she speaks, the paladins with whom she had been in counsel come into the room. Their armor—in the blue and gold usually associated with his father’s kingdom, but also ubiquitous among paladins of all other races—shines in the afternoon soon that streams in the tall, narrow windows at the back of the chamber.

“Right,” Anduin says, reaching across the table to point at the words written in his father’s handwriting—or so it appears. He reads aloud, “ ‘Come to Stormwind. Come Cautiously. Come at once.’ It reminded me of—”

“Of your lessons with me,” Laurena finishes for him. “Specifically: ‘Come to Light. Come freely. Come at once.’ You’re quite astute.”

“Thank you,” Prince Anduin says. “Then I’m not imagining it?”

“Oh no,” she says, shaking her head. “The parallel is there, though I admit it was _quite_ accidental.”

“Accidental?” Anduin says. “But that means . . .”

The high priestess’s smile widens as the paladins move around and behind the prince’s chair. “Do not struggle, Prince,” Laurena says as she stands. “You are already one with the Holy Light, and this needn’t be painful.”

Anduin jumps to his feet, prepared to fight or flee, but Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker takes him by the wrist. The prince reaches for the dagger he’s kept in his boot since Valeera suggested it a year ago, but Katherine the Pure, another paladin often at Grayson’s side, knocks the slim blade from his hand and raises her impressive mace. “Do not fight us, Prince Anduin,” she says, and the threatening words from a woman so good and pure send a chill through Anduin’s very core. He stills himself and lets them place him back into his chair.

“What do you want?” Prince Anduin says, striving to keep his voice calm and confident. “Why are you doing this? Why did you summon Valeera Sanguinar?”

“Valeera . . . ?” the high priestess says, raising her eyes to the ceiling as if struggling to recall the name. “Oh her. Yes. We couldn’t have a hero of Stormwind in Moonglade during the first _cleansing._ She would have made the job far more difficult.”

“Cleansing?” The prince struggles against the strong hands holding him in his seat. “What kind of _madness_ has taken you, Laurena?”

“It is no madness, Prince,” she says, pacing behind her chair. “Rather, I’m finally seeing _clearly_ for the first time in my life, and the Creator is filling me like a vessel. Fear not, young prince, for soon _your eyes too_ shall be opened.” She looks to Lord Grayson and Katherine and says, her voice firm and cruel, “Hold him there, tightly now.”

The prince struggles briefly, but Laurena leans across the table and holds her hands wide, fingers splayed, and intones, “Your mind is my mind. Your mind is for the Creator, for the Holy Light. Your thoughts are _mine_ to control. . . .”

 

On the Stormwind docks, the prince’s father stands face to face with the only Blood Elf he’s ever loved.

“I can send my men with you,” Varian says, holding young Valeera Sanguinar by the shoulders and setting her with a caring and stern look. “They can make sure the trip goes smoothly, and if there’s need of their help when you get there—”

“No, Lo’gosh,” Valeera insists, not for the first time since the two left the Wizards’ Sanctum, shaking her head, calming as they wait on the dock for the ship to be made sea-ready. It’s nearly time to push off. “I’ll be fine. _Laana_ will be fine. I’m sure my hunch is just that: a hunch, and probably without cause.”

A blue flicker appears beside them, and then a shimmer, and then it grows rather quickly into a sphere of bright blue—arcane magic—and in an instant it’s gone, and beside them instead is Brann Farnsbottom, apprentice of Wizards’ Sanctum.

He bows awkwardly to the king, and then offers something like a bow to Valeera as well.

“Is there something you _need,_ boy?” the King roars. “I don’t like being startled like that.”

“Ah, well, my liege,” Brann says, adjusting his glasses, which have gone crooked during his teleportation. “I thought I should let you know, sir—and miss,” he adds, quickly glancing at Valeera, “that I _can_ scry quite well, and I’ve been in touch with the scrying glass in Darnassus.” He turns to Valeera again to add, “It was put there many years ago, adjacent to the temple, so that we might—”

“ _Please_ go on, Farnsbottom!” the king snaps. “What did you _learn_?”

“Right,” he says, taking himself by the lapel and lifting his chin, looking rather proud. “Well, the scrying glass in Darnassus seems to be off line, as it were.”

“ _Off line?_ ” Valeera drops a boot on the dock planks as if trying to shatter the world. “What does that _mean_?”

“Oh, so,” Brann stammers, looking a touch less proud, “I _suppose_ it would mean the glass in Darnassus has been damaged.”

“Damaged?” The King says.

“Shattered,” Brann offers. “Smashed, perhaps.”

Valeera’s head swims with visions of Darnassus in ruins, perhaps ravaged by fire, perhaps under desperate attack by an army of demons from the sky, tearing the World Tree itself to bits—leaving sawdust and twigs and a thousand dead elves. Could Moonglade itself fare any better?

“The matter grows more urgent,” Varian says, balling his hands into fists. “Shipmen, are we ready to sail?”

“Aye, my liege!” calls a man from the deck. “A few moments, and we’ll invite passengers aboard.”

The king turns back to Valeera, his jaw set and his eyes tired yet enduring in the way that once made Valeera truly love him—in something like the way she loves Laana now. _But no, that’s not quite right,_ Valeera tells herself. _That’s not quite right. Laana is so much more . . ._

She can’t find the word.

“Valeera,” the king says, holding her gaze, “your goal in Kalimdor expands.”

“Indeed.”

“You go now not only as _friend_ to Moonglade,” the king goes on, “but as an _agent_ and _hero_ for Stormwind, and indeed the Alliance wholly.”

Valeera looks deep into the king’s searing blue eyes. _He’s counting on war,_ she knows. _Perhaps he’s right._ “I understand,” is all she says out loud.

“Passengers, come aboard!” the dockmaster bellows from his post at the bottom of the gangplank.

“Good luck, Valeera Sanguinar,” Coal says, extending his hand, which Valeera accepts and shakes.

“Be _careful_ , my dear friend,” the king says, and he pulls the Blood Elf into an embrace. “I worry about you.”

“You _and_ Broll,” Valeera says, managing a smile despite her anxious heart. “Always treating me like the daughter you never had.”

“Broll Bearmantle,” the King says with a chuckle. “He’s been at that wretched-sounding druidic council for _months,_ I expect.”

“They are eternal,” Valeera agrees.

The king smiles deeply at her, but suddenly pulls his gaze from hers to something behind her, and his face opens into the battle-ready countenance she’s seen a thousand times. “Look there! Who charges as if the world is aflame?”

The others turn to look, Valeera drawing her blades as she spins: Far along the dock, where the newest ships in the King’s navy are docked before the long icy voyage to Northrend, a tall figure, graceful and strong and head-to-toe in the rough-stitched leather armor of a young and brash hunter, runs toward them, and at her side, nearly as graceful on its feline legs, a somehow familiar cat. The hunter, as she runs, raises one hand in the air, perhaps to draw her bow or gun, and releases a cry so savage and primal that Valeera’s blood seems to run cold.

As the pair come closer, the King draws his greatsword. Coal pulls a pair of daggers from their sheathes in his boots. Even the young mage—perhaps seeing the chance for battle for the first time—balls his fists at his sides, and they begin to glow with arcane energy. The dock guards gather at their king and draw their on weapons.

_But that cat,_ Valeera thinks, _and this hunter’s voice. Somehow so familiar. . . ._ At the moment it strikes her, her cold blood runs hot once more, and her heart leaps into her mouth, and she sheathes her daggers, pushes her way past her king and between the guards, and charges at the approaching pair.

“Valeera!” Coal shouts.

“Not on your own!” the King commands.

But she ignores them both, and she feels her cheeks strain with the size of her smiles, and when the hunter is closer, she sees that same smile on her Night Elf face. Valeera shrieks with glee as she leaps into the open arms of Laana Mistwhisperer, and lets herself be twirled and twirled, and when they finally settle into a proper hug, she takes the beautiful _druid_ by the face and says, “I love you, Laana.”

“I love _you,_ ” Laana replies, her smile falling from glee to a pure romantic joy, the kind of smile poets write songs about, and the kiss they shared something even the poets could only imagine.

Beside them, Broll growls—and he’s not even in animal form anymore. “There will be time for _affections_ later on,” he says, his voice husky and rich. “A great crisis has fallen over all of Azeroth, and we must act.”

“I’m afraid my old friend is right,” King Varian says, smiling at the reunited elves as he reaches them, Coal and Farnsbottom beside him, and taking hold of Broll’s arm in greeting. “I’m happy to see you, and glad to see you’re well. But I fear a place you hold very dear may be far worse off.”

Coal steps between them, clearing his throat. “My King, and my esteemed comrades, might I suggest we bring this conversation indoors?”

“Of course you’re right,” the king says. He then turns to the ship—still ready to depart, awaiting its passengers—and bellows, “Hold here until you hear from me!”

“Aye, You Highness!” the captain replies from the prow.

“Anduin will be back from the Cathedral by now,” the King says, clapping the dwarf around the shoulders and striding along the dock, “and you’ll want to bring it to Mathias.”

“Aye, King,” Coal says, hurrying along with the king. The others follow behind, Laana and Valeera in a half-embrace, the Blood Elf’s shoulder rested on her druid lover’s shoulder, relief upon their faces and in their walks like a magic all its own.

The king has one of his guards return to the Keep to retrieve the evidentiary scroll from the prince. “Meanwhile,” he says to his party, “I have a secret safe house here in the dock district where we can speak about the _ills_ that seem to be overrunning Azeroth, and who might be behind them.”

 

“It’s good you came to me,” Jaina Proudmoore says as she leads the Darnassus crier Herald Moonstalker to the gryphon master’s post. “Now I think you should return to Darnassus, satisfied you’ve done your duty—above and beyond, I would add.”

“Thank you,” Moonstalker says, relieved to be finished with this surprise quest.

Upon hearing the alarming news the herald bore, Jaina Proudmoore attempted to reach the mages of the Wizards’ Sanctum in Stormwind with her scrying glass, but no one responded to her calls.

“Pained and I will teleport to Stormwind as soon as you’re safely away,” the mage ruler of Theramore continues. “Whatever aid I can offer to King Varian will be his, of course. Thank you. You’re a credit to your race, and the druid should be honored to hold you as a friend.”

Moonstalker beams and bows at the mage before accepting the reins from the dwarven gryphon master. “Thank you again, Lady Proudmoore.” She turns to Pained, the Night Elf warrior who has been the mage’s bodyguard for generations. “And you, sister. I hope I will see you again.”

Pained bows deeply. “Ishnu-dal-dieb,” she says, and she pulls the herald into a vigorous embrace. “When I am next in Darnassus, we shall embrace once more.”

“I’d like that,” the herald says, heat rising on her cheeks. “Good-bye.” With that, she takes wing into the misty sky over Theramore Isle, and when she looks down at her sister and the mage ruler, there appears a blue sphere beside them. They step through, and vanish, bound for Stormwind.

The gryphon flies low over Dustwallow Marsh, and the mist is so thick that the herald’s hair is wet through before long, her cheeks running with water, the gryphon’s wings beaded. As they approach the dry heat of the Barrens, though, the mist thins and the herald marvels at the way the air ahead seems to shimmer. She feels so light, so without burden, as the gryphon soars high above the Horde villages that it almost feels an impossibility when her gryphon is clipped on its wing by a crossbow’s bolt—and spirals toward the arid orange ground. It is the last thing she remembers before the world goes black.

 

The motley party in Stormwind huddles together at a low wooden table in a small room lit only by a pair of flickering candles in the table’s middle. The pair of guards posted outside the little dock district safehouse ensure their privacy and security, and Broll has already relayed the little he and Laana surmised during their flight south.

Valeera holds Laana’s long-fingered hand in her lap, caressing each digit and longing for the chance to get away from the group—away from the _world,_ really, which holds them in the face of such trials, duties, and crises—to demonstrate her love and longing for the druid. She looks around the table at the group who have assembled in the face of this growing mystery. “Do we have a next move?” she asks when her eyes settle on Varian. “A _first_ move?”

The king narrows his eyes and sets his jaw. “I can’t imagine what’s keeping—” he begins, but is interrupted when the safehouse door flies open behind him.

Coal and Valeera jump to their feet and draw their blades—but it is the prince, and he clenches the scroll that began this mystery in his gauntleted fist. “Forgive me,” he says as the pair of rogues retake their seats. The prince takes the chair beside his father and slams the scroll onto the table. “The high priestess and her bishops do have quite a _lot_ to say. Not much about the scroll, though, I’m afraid.”

“As I thought,” Coal says, rising again. He looks at Varian: “With your permission, sire?”

“Of course,” the king says. “Make haste.”

Coal salutes briefly, grabs the scroll, and is out the door like a shot on his way to SI:7 headquarters and Mathias Shaw, head of Stormwind Intelligence.

The King rises and sighs. In the flickering light of the candles, his face takes on frightening shadows. He speaks quietly, as if to himself. “Valeera called under false pretenses. My mages called away, no doubt on imaginary business as well. And now perhaps even _Moonglade_ itself has been attacked.”

“What’s to be done, Father?” Anduin says from the table, twisted in his seat to watch the king.

“I fear I do not know,” Varian says, “and that might be what frightens me most of all.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valeera and Laana on the sea; Coal gets a partner; Jaina in enemy territory

The massive druid Broll Bearmantle stands on the docks at Stormwind, the King of that city-state at his side, and together they watch as _The Bravery_ move out of the harbor.

Broll squints at the fine mist blowing up from the sea. “I’m worried.”

“We all are, old friend.” The King places a reassuring hand on Broll’s shoulder, but he has missed his meaning.

“Varian,” Broll says, turning to face the human, “Lo’gosh. Of course I worry about the new course our world seems set on, about this new _evil_ which has reared up in the last two days. But right now, watching your ship take those we love on a quest so vague, so potentially dangerous, I worry about your son, the Prince Anduin.”

Varian cocks his eyebrows at the druid. “Then we worry about the same,” the King says, “for I worry about him—and about Valeera, and about the druid she loves—for I know not what we’ve sent them to find. Darnassus may not be the friendly place we expect it to be.”

“Anduin, though,” Broll says. “He . . .”

“He takes his magic from the Light,” the King says, lifting his gaze to the sun setting out over the sea. “I’ve thought of that too, but he’s been to the Cathedral, and he reported nothing _unusual._ Perhaps this evil hasn’t seeped into every corner of that school of magic. Perhaps it begins and ends with the High Priestess Tyrande.”

“And the Chapel in the Plaguelands,” Broll points out, for he witnessed that place only a day ago.

The King hums in concerned and reluctant agreement. “Then Anduin _must_ be on this mission,” he insists, “for who better to represent me to the High Priestess, if need be, than my own son who kneels in the Light so famously?”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Broll says, turning his back on the dock. _Or perhaps his trip to the Cathedral was more revelatory than he’s let on._ “I’ll see you later.” As the druid steps away, he shifts into his feline form, and he moves in the shadows and up toward the city proper.

 

_The Bravery_ cuts through the rough sea like a knife. Its crew hurries about on deck, for the watchers have predicted a storm this evening. Anduin Wrynn stands at the rail starboard, looking north toward the swirling madness of the Maelstrom. He can’t make it out from there, but something draws his gaze just the same.

“You might get below, highness,” a crewman says, hurrying past, a length of rope over his shoulder, his shirtsleeves torn at the shoulders to reveal his worker’s physique and the scars of burns and slashes in the face of foes and foul sailing. “The skies don’t look pleasant.”

“No, no,” Anduin says, smiling at the crewman. “I think you’re quite right. Have you seen the elves? The women I came on board with in Stormwind?”

The crewman winks at the prince. “Aye, they took a cabin in the bow on the starboard side. _Resting_ , the Blood Elf said.”

“Resting, eh?” the prince echoes, and he claps the crewman on the shoulder. “I’ll get below in a moment. Hate to miss a moment of sea air when I can get it.”

The crewman moves on—back to whatever work he’s doing—and the Prince walks casually along the rail to the bow of the ship to look west. Their course will take them round the south end of Kalimdor, and then up its western coast, a long way from the shore to avoid being spied by Horde coastal towns, to Rut’theran Village at the base of the world tree. From there, they’ll take the portal to Darnassus, and, if what they find isn’t disastrous, a flight to Moonglade to confirm the druid Broll’s suspicions. As for Prince Anduin, he thinks the druid’s fears seem a bit far-fetched.

He looks again to his right, to the north, toward the Maelstrom. It seems to beckon, and he’s nearly driven to overpower the helmsman and force the ship north—but at the same time, he almost wants to leap overboard, into the dark depths, and swim to the bottom, never to surface again.

 

Below the prince’s feet, the Blood Elf Valeera Sanguinar sits on a low and lumpy cot with her back to the ship’s inner hull, and she gazes down in the flickering candlelight at the beautiful face in her lap, letting her fingers move in a gentle sweep through her lover’s hair, and then back to her forehead, and again.

Laana hums—the lovely Night Elf, her moonlight—as Valeera combs her hair like that with her fingernails, and she smiles the littlest bit. When she opens her eyes, the cabin glows a bit brighter in the golden light.

“You should sleep, Laana,” Valeera quietly and gently scolds. “You’ve had a very long day, a very long _journey._ ”

Laana rolls onto her side and pushes herself onto her elbow. “I know,” she says, her voice as soft and gentle as the sunlight through the canopy in the forests of Moonglade. She looks into Valeera’s eyes and her smile goes crooked and wide. “I just can’t get myself to settle down. I have so much _energy_ , somehow.”

Valeera cocks her head and returns the Night Elf’s sly smile, and when Laana strains her neck a bit, Valeera lowers hers, closes her eyes, and feels the soft and full warmth of Laana’s lips against hers. She opens her lips a bit and thrills in her heart when Laana takes her lower lip between her teeth as she sits fully up and wraps her long fingers around Valeera’s neck.

“You should sleep,” Valeera protests, half-hearted, breaking their kiss for an instant, but the druid doesn’t even argue, doesn’t utter a word. She just hums and shakes her head quickly, then pulls Valeera back to her and kisses her harder, more hungrily.

Laana’s lips move along Valeera’s jaw line, deposting small kisses on a path to her ear and down her neck to the leather collar on her shoulder. Valeera shivers as Laana’s lip lock onto her throat, the soft breath from her nose tickling her skin so Valeera’s hand and arm move almost on their own, wrapping around Laana’s waist and pulling her tightly against Valeera’s body. “I missed you,” Valeera pants, barely able to speak.

Laana hums against her skin as her lips move across Valeera’s shoulder, pushing the collar aside as she goes, to reach the Blood Elf’s skin. At the moment Valeera wishes Laana would pull at the straps and free her from her binding leather armor, Laana does just that. She scoots onto her knees, determination on her face, her eyes narrow with the driving lust in her chest, and Valeera’s heart swells. Laana’s fingers move quickly, gracefully, easily, and the leather chest piece is up and over her head in moments. The chill from the sea as the storm begins in earnest flutters across her bare skin, and Valeera must catch her breath as Laana falls to her, her mouth on her breasts and her arms tight around her waist.

“Laana,” Valeera moans, letting herself slide along the hull till she’s on her back, Laana straddling her, her mouth on one breast, her hand on the other, and Valeera pushes at the druid’s soft leather robe till Laana sits up and pulls it off, tosses it to the floor. Her hair—the color of the new leaves in the spring, but somehow even more lovely—falls over her chest like a curtain Valeera is desperate to pull open. She wraps her arms around Laana as she pulls herself up and presses her face into the warmth of Laana’s breasts. When the Night Elf hums with pleasure, she holds her more tightly, and when Laana pulls up her knees and lies back on the cot, Valeera runs her fingertips up and down the Night Elf’s outer thighs. She lets her nails graze the soft skin of her waist and hips. She lowers herself and kisses Laana’s belly. She kisses hips, and she kisses the inside of each thigh.

“Valeera,” Laana says, and Valeera looks up at her, her golden eyes bright in the dusky light of the cabin. “You’re teasing me.”

With their eyes locked, Valeera finally lets her lips find Laana’s heat, the familiar and thrilling scent, and she holds tight to Laana’s hips and presses herself against the cot as Laana writhes under her until she’s screaming with the crash of thunder over the sea, not far off.

 

In Stormwind, the dwarven SI:7 agent known as Coal stands before Mathias Shaw, leader of that intelligence organization. The latter paces, silent and fuming, his face ruddy with rage, his fists balled behind his back, in and out of the shadows of his office. “You going to explain yourself, Coal?”

The dwarf swallows and coughs. “Don’t see how I can, sir.”

“Nor do I,” Mathias says. “You come to me with this scroll—which I can’t imagine why I haven’t already seen, but we’ll come back to that—looking about to _burst_ with the intel, and you thump it on my desk like it’s the key to every mystery we’ve never solved, and I unfurl and . . . And you tell me, Coal: what do I find?”

“Nothing, sir,” Coal says, looking at the floor.

Mathias stops pacing to bend over his desk and slam down his fist: “Nothing!”

“I don’t understand it,” Coal begins, but Mathias cuts him off: “The _Prince_ took the scroll, the only bit of real evidence we’ve got as to why Valeera—a _sister_ in _subterfuge_ , if you will—has been manipulated, putting herself and potentially our _King_ and our _city_ in danger, and returned it to you as _blank_ as the day it was cut, and you don’t _notice?_ ”

“I’m sorry, Mathias.”

“You will be,” Mathias says, lowering his gaze across the desk. “ _I’ll_ talk to the king. You’re on your way to Ironforge to cement the cooperation of the council _and_ to keep an eye on High Priest Rohan.”

“He’s a good man,” Coal puts in.

“We’ll be keeping an eye on _every_ leader in the Light,” Mathias says, his palms flat on the desktop, his chin sharp and accusatory, “until I know just _exactly_ what the hell is going on, is that clear?”

“Aye, sir,” Coal says quietly and rough. The words catch in his throat. “Aye.” He turns to go. If he hurries, he can catch the Deeprun Tram and be in his old home city in a few hours’ time.

“Oh, and Coal,” Mathias says, stopping him in the doorway. “You’ll be taking a _partner_ this time.”

“A partner?!” Coal snaps, spinning to face his chief. “I haven’t had a partner in ye—”

“Honeycut!” Mathias snaps, cutting him off, and out of the shadows in the corner of the office steps a gnome woman all in black. “Go with him.”

“Yessir,” the little rogue says, pulling back her black hood to reveal a pair of bright blue pigtails and a face cute enough to sweeten a cup of dwarven coffee. Her mouth, though, is set in a grim frown that suits neither her appearance nor name. “Come on, big guy. And try to keep up.”

Coal glares for a beat at Mathias.

“Go, Coal,” Mathias says, “and _Honeycut_ is in command on this mission. She knows Ironforge better than you do—”

“ _Better than me?”_ Coal roars, but Mathias goes on.

“—and the best ways to infiltrate the Hall of Mysteries,” more calmly he adds, when the gnome is out the door and out of earshot, “because she’s been stationed in Ironforge for decades.”

“Aye, sir,” Coal grumbles, and he strides from the room, his eyes on the bouncing blue hair twenty paces ahead.

 

“You’ll sleep now, I think?” Valeera says as she lays her head on Laana’s bare shoulder and lifts her chin, offering her reddened lips for an appreciative kiss.

Laana accepts, humming as she does. “I think I might sleep for a thousand years after that.”

“Good.” Valeera kisses Laana’s lips once more as she rises from the bed.

“You’re leaving?” Laana says, opening her eyes.

“For a moment.” Valeera lowers to one knee beside the bed and brushes Laana’s hair from her forehead and temples. “You know how much I hate a sea voyage. I need the fresh air up top. When you wake, I’ll be lying beside you. I promise.”

“Alright.” She smiles up at her, and then closes her eyes and rolls onto her side. “I love you,” she adds to the wall.

“I love you, my moonlight.” Valeera creeps from the cabin and closes the creaking door behind her. At the base of the steps, she gasps as a lighted figure glides down from the second deck. “Anduin!”

“Oh, Valeera,” he says, for it is him, lighted by the Holy Light of the Creator and levitating over the stairs like a ghost. “Can’t you sleep?”

“I just needed some fresh air, Your Grace,” Valeera says, almost surprising herself with the honorarium she utters.

He nods gently, a placid smile on his face, as he glides past her and along the lower hallway toward the ship’s bow. “Yes, you’ll be needed plenty of air, old friend.”

She watches him float—like a wisp through Moonglade, but so much larger, so much brighter, so much more imposing—into the ship’s most forward cabin. He closes the door, shutting in all that Holy Light, and after a moment Valeera proceeds up the steps, and up the second set to the top deck. The night air is swollen with a fine mist. The sky is clear, the storm having passed while she and Laana enjoyed each other. Only one crewman stands on deck, and the man at the helm hangs lazily on the ship’s wheel, his arms wrapped around it like an exhausted lover.

“I’ve been at sea too much,” Valeera mutters to herself as she leans on the rail and looks out over the sea, reflecting the millions of points of light above and the giant glowing body of the moon. “Makes me edgy.”

She watches the rising and falling of the gentle sea around _The Bravery_ and recalls Laana’s teachings. They walked that morning in the hills north of Nighthaven. Laana believed very deeply in _sweating_ , and in difficult hikes to clear the mind of troubles and flush the body of pain, of toxins, of the poisonous residual influence of a demonic possession. Valeera never knew quite whether to believe it would work, but regardless: at the time, she hated it. At the time she might have hated Laana, too, in those first few weeks in spite of the Night Elf’s beauty and the feelings she stirred in her breast.

“This,” Valeera panted as she climbed on her hands and knees up a steep slope and as the sun climbed up from the hills to the east, “is the _stupidest_ thing I’ve ever done.”

Laana, behind her on the slope and climbing easily, as if she were part of the land itself—turned out she was, in a way, of course—laughed lightly, the sound of the stream that ran out of Lake Elune’ara in the south as it babbled over rocks and fallen trees on its way to Winterspring. “Valeera, the breath you waste complaining could be _filling you up_ instead, lifting you like a great air ship, easing your climb, sending your spirit aloft.”

“Oh, _please_.” Valeera had none of it, and she dropped her seat to the chilly and damp ground and leaned her arms on her knees to glare at her Night Elf nurse. “Why are you making me climb all this way? What is this suppose to prove? How is this helping me get over my affliction?”

Laana sat beside her and looked south over Nighthaven and, in fact, the whole of Moonglade. It spread out beneath them like a living map in a book—some book Valeera would never have read. Perhaps Broll would have, or Anduin.

And of course Laana. In love with her books, the Night Elf was. She kept stacks of them upstairs at her house, some thick, some thin, but none interesting enough to Valeera to even lift.

Still, Moonglade did look beautiful from this high up. The lake glittered as the sun rose to their left; the young leaves sprouting on the trees—the place was _filthy_ with trees; Valeera didn’t know there was this much green in all of Azeroth—were the color of Laana’s hair; the people of Nighthaven strolled in the morning’s cool light, and from up there they looked so small, so insignificant.

Valeera found her breathing had come back, and she released a lungful of Moonglade’s air between pursed lips and marveled at the puff of vapor.

“You’re feeling a little better?” Laana said, rising.

“A little.”

Laana offered her hand. “Come, then. We’re nearly at the top.”

Valeera sighed and let the Night Elf pull her to her feet. She didn’t let herself smile when Laana grinned as they stood for a moment on the slope, face to face and hand in hand. Then up they climbed, Laana leading this time, her long, strong legs moving easily over the difficult terrain, the muscles gleaming, glistening with sweat, as lovely as Lake Elune’ara, and Valeera had to look away as she climbed. But at the top—

_—Oh, at the top._ From there, the Great Sea stretched out forever. Valeera could see the world tree Teldrassil, and beyond it, like a speck of red and green and blue, Bloodmyst and Azuremyst Isles. And to her right, it almost seemed impossible: Northrend floated on the horizon like a shining icy cloud. Who knew what lay beyond that to the north? And the sea south of that, which stretched between Moonglade and Winterspring and Valeera’s own homeland at the northern tip of the Eastern Kingdom, was so vast, so impossibly vast, that the huge pair continents wasn’t even a speck. It wasn’t even the merest hint. It simply didn’t exist from so far away.

“It’s . . .” she began, but she couldn’t go on.

“I know,” Laana said, and when she took Valeera’s smaller hand in hers, Valeera let her. In fact she believed she might float away if not for Laana’s firm grip.

“Alright, miss?” the crewman says as he passes, and Valeera shakes from her reverie.

“I’m fine. Fine.”

“We’ll be coming round Land’s End Beach within the hour, miss.” The sailor’s voice carries as he crosses the deck, and it sounds as if it might come from miles away. “We ask our passengers to get below deck until we’ve reached the far coast. Pirates down there, you know.”

“Alright,” Valeera says, her eyes still on the sea. She can see it now—the shore of Tanaris—and she turns from the railing with one last deep lungful of fresh, damp sea air to head back down to Laana’s bed and curl up with her head on the Night Elf’s slowly rising and falling chest. She smiles just thinking of it. But when she reaches the stairs, a light grows from beyond, bright and brighter, and then a sound—

—No, not a sound. It’s the absence of sound, really, as if somewhere someone has flicked a switch and everything has grown so silent, so utterly impossibly silent, that Valeera’s ears seem to open wider in search for any hint of noise.

It last barely an instant, and then the light is overwhelming, and the suck in her ears as if her mind is being pulled out, torn from her, grows too strong. She collapses to the deck, and then the deck is gone, blown to bits—the whole boat, gone—and Valeera is falling to sea amidst bits of _The Bravery_ , planks and scraps of sail and iron braces and barrels of rum, cracked up their middles like eggs, and she begins to sink, to sink, to sink.

She looks up through the murky waters of the southern Great Sea and sees him: Prince Anduin, floating ten feet above the surface of the water, glowing more brightly than Valeera might have imagined possible, his arms stretched outward and upward, his face pointed toward the night sky—if it is still night, for he lights the world like the sun itself. She struggled with the current, desperately pushes against the sea to propel herself upward toward him, toward the surface, toward _air._

But she is too weak, or the sea is too strong, and salt water fills her mouth as her eyes close against his blinding Light, and something presses against her, so she wraps her arms around it—smooth and cool, and its very touch assures her somehow—and then she remembers no more.

 

Jaina Proudmoore is back in Kalimdor, and she rides through Dustwallow Marsh with her bodyguard Pained and a squadron of officers from Theramore Isle. She is bound for Ratchet, the neutral goblin town in the Northern Barrens. Before long, though, only Pained will ride with her, for her meeting in Ratchet is to be kept a secret, and the orc she meets will likely only bring a personal guard as well—one who can be trusted to keep a secret.

King Varian Wrynn was reluctant to agree to her meeting, but she rules Theramore—the only human stronghold on Kalimdor—independent of Stormwind, officially, so he had little real say in the matter. Furthermore, Jaine Proudmoore has been a liaison between the humans and orcs for a long time—longer than the King has been alive. Her opinions on matters of states, even when they frustrate the King, are hard to ignore.

So Varian agreed, and barely a moment later the mage teleported to her tower in Theramore, notified Pained of their mission, and began to ride.

“I say again, Lady,” the Night Elf bodyguard says as the border to the Barrens comes into view ahead. “I don’t like it.”

“Of course you don’t.” Jaina allows herself a playful smile. “There isn’t much you _do_ like, faithful Pained.”

Pained grumbles on her mount beside her—she looks especially huge on one of the mage’s horses, rather than the huge cats her people normally ride. It used to make Jaina giggle, but she’s long since learned _not_ to giggle at a Night Elf warrior, especially one who’s held to her orders to protect the Lady Proudmoore for this long.

They ride out of the heavy shade of the Marsh, and in moments the sun bakes down on dusty, tan land. The Theramore Isle guards hold at the border and wave as the mage and her personal guard ride on. “ _Why_ must we invite the Horde into this business?” Pained says, her voice as rough as her hands, and nearly as strong. “Seems to me they’re most likely the _cause_ of it . . . whatever’s going on.”

“Pained. . . .” Jaina says as something of an admonishment.

“Mark my words,” the Night Elf says, and she adds under her breath, “Reeks of Blood Elf.”

“Valeera was the first target,” Jaina reminds her. “Is she not a Blood Elf?”

Pained grunts. “She’s different.”

“Perhaps.”

They ride in silence after that, and the horses whinny as they pass the Crossroads. Jaina shushes them, caresses the long neck of her mount.

“It’s the wolves,” Pained says, nodding toward the central Horde village. Four wolves—what orcs use for mounts—are tied to stakes outside, and they sniff the air as the two Alliance riders pass.

“Can you understand the horses’ complaints?” Jaina teases. “Perhaps there’s _druid_ in you, after all.”

“Hardly.”

They ride slowly down the hill toward the sea and Ratchet, and Jaina finds with her eyes, standing on the hill that overlooks the dock, one of her dearest and most unusual friends: Thrall, son of Durotan, and Warchief of the Horde.

“We’ll leave our mounts at the inn.” Jaine clicks her tongue on her mount and leads him up a gentle slope toward the goblin-run inn halfway up the cliff-face. “From there, we’ll go on foot.”

“As you say,” Pained says, hanging back a bit, surveying the area from her saddle like a war general, her silver eyes narrowed, her jaw set tensely. “Something feels wrong, Lady.”

“I sense nothing.” Jaina scans the path ahead: a Ratchet guard; a pair of Blood Elves engrossed in a map and standing off to the side; the innkeeper stands just outside the large doorway to his business, his hands idly behind his back, rocking on his heels and whistling.

Pained drops down from her mount and leads it by the reins as she pulls her sword from its scabbard on her hip. The moment she does, the whistling innkeeper moves backward, into the building, and the gate drops down in front of him, shutting them out. The Ratchet guard, a moment ago apparently walking his beat, suddenly breaks into a run down the slope toward the heart of the village. The Blood Elves casually roll up their map and stow it, and they look up and smile at Pained and Lady Jaina.

“Afternoon, Jaina.” The pair of Blood Elves—both men, both in shining red and gold armor—bow deeply for Jaina as the mage and her guard pass, Jaina still on horseback, Pained with her eyes on the Blood Elves and her fist on the hilt of her sword. “Have you given up your practice of the _arcane_ magical arts and come into the Light, as the Creator meant you to?”

Jaina glances at Pained, who steps quickly between her lady and the pair of Blood Elves. They smile up at her, in spite of their veiled threats. “I believe,” Jaina replies, “that if the Creator meant me for something other than what I am, then I would _be_ something other than what I am.”

“Step back.” Pained moves toward the Blood Elves, raising her sword in warning.

But the Blood Elves do not step back. Instead they fold their hands as if in prayer, and they begin to glow with Holy Light, and above them—on the shuttered inn’s second floor—a window flies open.

Jaina looks up and finds the face of a Night Elf woman—as much Pained’s opposite as a Night Elf woman could be: fair, prettier than strong, eyes shining in gold, and with a gentle smile on her lips. But the smile vanishes in a blood-curling shriek, and she throws both her hands out and blasts down a ray of Light so powerful that Jaina is knocked from her horse, caught by surprise and unprepared to protect herself.

Pained is at her side, sword up, in an instant, and Jaina produces a huge shield of ice around herself and her guard.

“Blast it,” one of the Blood Elves says, all calmness gone from his face, now wrinkled an contorted in rage. He looks up at the window. “Too soon!”

High up on the hilltop, a single orc shouts down to them, “Jaina!” as he leaps into the fray, dropping a totem of healing as he lands on the inn’s rooftop. To Jaina, the great orc’s voice is muffled, but she knows his heart, and knows why he’s leapt from upon high to come to her aid.

Inside the ice block, Jaina holds tight to Pained’s hand.

“It _is_ Blood Elves,” Pained whispers, “as I’ve said.”

“Look there!” Jaina replies, lifting her eyes to the window of the inn. “Is that not one of your sisters?”

Pained scowls. “Perhaps she was _once_ , but neither of us is _truly_ a sister of the Kaldorei any longer.”

It is one of the great tragedies of Jaina’s life that her faithful guard and confidante is not happy, can likely never _be_ happy, no matter how much Jaina tries to make her so. But she hasn’t time to dwell on that now: her ice block begins to crack. The spell will wear off any moment. “Be ready, friend.”

“I am always ready.” The Night Elf bursts from the block of ice the moment it sublimates, her sword moving through the air before her like an extension of her own powerful arms, and with a battlecry in the language of her people, she strikes at both the Blood Elves. One is quick, and protects himself in a glowing shield of Light, but other tries to block the blow—and takes the brunt of it against his shoulder. He’s armored, but Pained is powerful, and the Blood Elf paladin falls to the ground.

Jaina, too, is free from her ice shield, and she summons a ball of fire in her palm and heaves it at the grounded paladin to ensure he not rise again. The shielded Blood Elf, though, charges her, his mace high and his mouth open—not screaming some vulgar cry of war, but instead chanting as if a prayer to the Creator.

“Jaina!” the orc cries again from the roof, and as he makes to leap from its eaves, the Night Elf in the chamber beneath blasts the roof to bits, sending Thrall sprawling, and he drops to the road in front of the inn with a thunderous crash. The elf priestess, however, floats slowly to the ground and as she lands calls around herself the protection of her holy magic. She holds out her hand, fingers splayed, eyes blazing, mouth curved into a wicked grin, making her appear more _demon_ than Night Elf, and she stands over the orc. “Your mind is _mine,_ Thrall, son of Durotan. My wishes are _your_ wishes, and you shall act under _my_ command.”

As she chants, Pained slams her sword into the barrier of Light, over and over, but to no avail. Jaina sends a bolt of ice against the second paladin, who moves to interfere to protect the priestess, stopping him _cold._ “Thrall, you _must_ resist!” Jaina shouts over the din of battle.

She watches as he rolls off his back and onto his hands and knees, still hurting from his fall from the roof, and now tormented by the powerful priestess’s mind control spell. His back arcs and his face shifts and contorts, the pain of resisting is so great.

“You _cannot_ resist the _strength_ of Holy Light, _Warchief_ ,” the priestess teases as works her magic on his mind. “ _Give in_ to my control and you can enjoy the power of the Creator as _we_ do.”

“I . . . won’t . . . let . . . you . . .” Thrall stammers as he pushes himself up onto one knee. He conjures lightning in his tense hands, and Jaina can see the strain of it in his great throat and arms, in his muscular back, cowed under the spell’s pressure, and at the same moment that Pained finally breaks through the priestess’s shield, the bal of lightning in the Warchief’s hand bursts outward in a bolt, knocking the priestess backward into the wall of the inn, and then arcing into the standing paladin, sending him sprawling.

Thrall rises to his full height, huffing through his nose like a bull. “I know why you asked to meet, Jaina Proudmoore,” he says, and his voice, though quiet, seems to echo in the darkening street. “The problem may be worse than I first thought. Come with me to Orgrimmar.”

“I’ll not set foot inside Orgrimmar,” Pained says, sheathing her sword and standing beside her mistress.

Jaina considers her faithful bodyguard, strong and stubborn, beautiful and fierce, and she reaches into the small money bag dangling from her belt and retrieves a handful of gold coins. “The inn will open again in a moment, now that the fighting is over,” Jaina says, holding out the handful of coins to Pained. “Get a room. I will come back after Thrall and I have had a chance to talk.”

“Jaina,” Pained says, urgency in her rough whisper. “It is not _safe_ for you there.”

“I will keep her safe,” Thrall says. “Noble elf, I swear this to you, and Orgrimmar will be a safe place, since there are so few practitioners of Holy Light magic inside our walls.”

“Then you’ve known of the problem we suddenly face,” Jaina says, “and the Alliance is not alone in this struggle?”

Thrall hums in the affirmative and nods slowly, running his fingers along the beads that hang around his thick neck. “The Horde, too, has seen learned of the attack on Moonglade, and the Pools of Vision have been sealed as a precaution.”

“Thrall is right, Pained.” Jaina takes her guard’s hands and looks into her eyes, pleading. “Come with us. We will be safe there, and I don’t like to think of you waiting here alone, where there’s already been one ambush.”

Pained shakes her head, and her fat blue braid swings across her chest. “I won’t enter Orgrimmar without a party of forty warriors to burn it to the ground. And I will be safe here, for I practice no magics, and am therefore of no concern to these _cultists_ for the Light.”

“The warrior may be right,” Thrall says, “but regardless, you and I should move quickly. We are prime targets for this new evil, and Ratchet offers little protection.”

Jaina holds Pained’s eyes in hers a moment longer, but the warrior won’t budge. “Fine,” Jaina says, and she draws her arms up and out and calls forth a blue sphere of arcane magic. “Into the portal, Thrall. I’ll follow.”

The orc shaman steps through after a sidelong glance at the Night Elf.

“You picked a funny time to finally stop obeying the High Priestess’s orders,” Jaina says, smiling.

“If Tyrande is truly a part of this madness,” Pained points out, “then her orders don’t seem quite so urgent any longer.”

“I hope this doesn’t mean I’ll be truly free of you, Pained.” She takes the warriors rough hands in hers and runs the tip of her thumbs along Pained’s wide and powerful palms.

“I hope the same.” Pained glances at the shimmering sphere. “You should go, my lady. I’ll be alright here, and I’ll wait for you.”

“I shall endeavor to hurry back,” Jaina says, and she reaches on her tiptoes to kiss Pained’s cheek, and then steps into the portal to Orgrimmar.

 

The dwarf Coal slouches on the bench seat of a speeding Deeprun Tram, his arms folded atop his belly, his chin low and his smoldering gaze on the pretty gnome rogue as she paces the floor of the tram car. “Are we clear on the plan, agent?”

He grumbles into his chest. “Call me Coal.”

Honeycut stops her pace and looks at him. “Are we clear on the plan, agent?”

“Aye, lass, we’re clear.”

“I’m _Agent Honeycut Crankwhistle_ ,” she says, “and I will not be addressed as ‘lass,’ understand?”

“Aye, aye,” Coal says. “When does this blasted train pull in to Ironforge, anyway?”

Honeycut draws a gold watch on a chain from her hip pocket. “Within the hour, I think.” She tucks away her watch and takes a deep breath before taking the seat next to Coal on the bench. “Agent, let’s not go into this mission with the wrong attitude.”

“As you say, lass—Agent Honeycut,” Coal says.

“I’m in command, as Mathias said, but we’re better off working as partners,” Honeycut goes on, shifting on the bench to face Coal. “And _your_ complete dedication to the mission is crucial if we’re to succeed.”

“And survive,” Coal says, rising from the bench. “Lass. Agent Honeycut. I’ve been a solo operative for as long as I’ve been in armor, and I know Ironforge as well as I know the back of my own hand. I’m sure you’re an asset to the service. I’m sure you’ll be an asset to this mission. But . . .”

“But what?” Honeycut says, following him with her eyes as he paces the car.

“Well . . . I’ve had my ideas about this case from the outset, and a few places in Ironforge I’d like to . . . _check out._ ”

“On your own,” Honeycut adds.

“Exactly.”

“Contacts? Informants?”

“You might say that.”

She holds his look for a long moment, and takes one of her pigtails in both hands and runs them over the length of it, her face deep in thought. “Alright,” she finally says. “I’ll give you tonight. In the morning, we start the mission as I’ve laid it out. Clear?”

“As Draenei vodka.”

 

It is before dawn, and on a sandy beach at the southern tip of Kalimdor, the druid Laana Mistwhisperer sits with her legs folded beneath her seat, and the lovely and dirty face—blond hair all atangle, stranglekelp clinging to her cheeks and throat, sand in her ears and hair—of Valeera Sanguinar in her lap. Laana pulls the weeds from her skin and brushes her hair back the best she can, and Valeera wakes with a cough.

“You’re alright, love,” Laana says, holding tight to Valeera as she brings up salt water and grit from her throat. When she’s done coughing, Laana strokes her cheeks with the back of her hand. “We’re in Tanaris.”

“How . . . ?”

“You found me—somehow—and wrapped yourself around my aquatic form. I swam at the surface to get you air, and I found the beach. We seem to be alone, aside from a few rather large turtles. They’ve kept to themselves, for the most part. So far.”

“Then you saved me.”

“Of course, my dear heart.”

Valeera sits up beside Laana and rests her head on the Night Elf’s shoulder.

“It was an explosion,” Laana says. “I think. I was in a deep sleep. The cabin filled with water so quickly.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t beside you, my moonlight.”

“You were soon enough.” Laana wraps an arm around Valeera’s shoulders and pulls her closer. “What could have caused the explosion?”

Valeera sits up straight as if waking from a nightmare. “Anduin,” the Blood Elf says as her eyes find Laana’s face in the dusk. “Anduin Wrynn. The prince. He sank the ship. He sank _The Bravery._ ”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one: Mathias has a theory; Anduin is compelled; Valeera and Laana part ways.

Mathias Shaw has been in many tight spots in his life: a knife at his throat, a shackle on his wrists and ankles, the business end of a polearm at his back, hanging upside down over a vat of Foresaken green ooze, whatever that stuff is—but none of it compared to this.

“Sir,” he gasps, barely able to breathe, his hands wrapped around the mithril gauntlets that squeezed his throat closed but unable to pull them off. “That is, my liege. If you just . . .”

“What do you think, Broll?” says King Varian Wrynn with a quick glance over his shoulder at the huge druid Broll Bearmantle. The King squeezes slightly tighter on Mathias’s throat and lifts him an inch off the ground. “How do we punish men under our command who speak seditious of the Prince?”

The druid crosses his arms and regards Mathias’s no-doubt reddening face. “In Darnassus,” he says, his voice as rich and dark as strong soil soaked with the blood of war, “we’d bind him and throw him from a limb of the World Tree into the sea.”

Varian smirks.

“Now and then they just land in the village below,” Broll goes on, stepping closer to the King and Mathias. “ _Splat._ Most elves don’t have the foresight to stretch themselves out and use the prevailing winds to carry them the last quarter mile or so to the sea. Not that they’d probably survive anyway.”

“What do you think, Shaw?” the King says, ignoring his Night Elf friend’s tangent of the macabre. “Do you bind you and throw you in the canal? Slower than a fall from the World Tree, I suppose, but it’s the best we can do on short notice. Maybe we just drop in the Stockade and let you fend for yourself. I hear the prisoner riots have really settled down a bit.”

“Please, Your Excellency,” Shaw squeaks. “If you’ll let me explain.”

The King gives his throat one last, painful squeeze and drops him to the hard, stone floor like a rag doll. He pushes himself onto all fours, gasping for breath. “Thank you, my liege.”

The King turns his back and paces to his throne. He sits, slouching with his elbow on the ornate arm rest, and lowers his gaze. “I’m listening, agent.”

“Yes, I can’t wait to hear this,” Broll says, leaning in the doorway on the east end of the throne room, his face bent into a smile. It’s the oddest thing, a smiling druid. Makes Mathias’s skin prickle and go cold.

“Sire,” Mathias says, hobbling to the throne and lowering himself once again to his knees. “I mean no disrespect, nor sedition. Merely that my agent Coal brought the parchment to me, and it has been erased, sire.” He pulls the scroll from his pouch and holds it up to the King. “You can see for yourself.”

The King takes the scroll and unfurls it. “This is a blank parchment, Mathias. Who’s to say this is the same scroll I saw this morning?”

Mathias risks rising as Broll crosses the floor in two long strides to look at the parchment over the King’s shoulder. “Sire, I’ve seen this before,” he says, keeping his voice as even and respectful as possible. Another outburst like the King’s might mean a snapped neck or a week in the Stocks. “It’s not perfectly obvious to the _untrained_ eye, but—”

“He’s right, Varian,” Broll says. “I see the traces of _magic_ on this parchment.”

“ _Shadow_ magic,” Mathias adds, stepping closer to the throne. The King eyes him briefly, barely lifting his gaze from the parchment. “We’ve studied this in SI:7, my liege. Her worship Laurena assisted us with this work. She demonstrated.”

“Did she now?” Varian says, handing the parchment to the druid and rising from his regal seat.

“Aye, Highness,” Mathias says, and he follows the King in a thoughtful pace across the throne room for a long silence before finally adding quietly, “Where _is_ the prince now, Highness?”

 

Off the eastern coast of Tanaris, Prince Anduin levitates over the frothing shallows of the Great Sea, the sea giants beneath taking no notice of the boy as he makes his slow and graceful way north.

Behind him, _The Bravery_ floats about in pieces, its crew and cargo—the Blood Elf and Night Elf lovers—by now long dead, if not by the blast of Holy Light he unleashed upon the ship, then by drowning.

His first mission, then, is complete, and he can’t help but smile as he imagines the completion of his next, far north of here in the Horde Barrens, atop a bluff, a place he’s never been and certainly never imagined he’d visit. But he can see it in his mind, shrouded in the dewy fog of a low, rare cloud, his targets in close conference, their guards at ease, and even when Anduin steps up to them they’ll find nothing to fear.

The Prince has no wish to see harm fall upon Lady Jaina Proudmoore. He likes her, in fact. He’s met her only a handful of times, usually at official, boring state events, but she’s always been gracious, passionate, and—not to put too fine a point on it—quite lovely to look at, as well. She’s always pushed for _peace_ , too, between his father’s people and the Horde. Anduin, too, wished for peace, a great deal more than his father did.

Thrall, too, seems a good orc, though there was a time when his father thought him no such animal as a _good orc_ existed. Like his friend Jaina, Thrall seemed to want peace for his people, and though the king and Thrall have been mortal enemies for years, Thrall has in the past put such ill will aside for diplomatic talks.

They’ve never amounted to much, but Prince Anduin is sure of one thing: when the leaders sit in conference to strive for peace, Lady Jaina Proudmoore and her orc friend Thrall will be at the table with King Varian, and the latter only begrudgingly.

Still, the compulsion the boy feels as the salty spray from the sea cools his face and the high cliffs of the eastern edge of Thousand Needles appear on his left is too great to ignore. He is powerless.

And what’s more, when his missions are complete and his master’s plan fulfilled to its ultimate end, won’t peace truly reign in Azeroth forever? For isn’t a land in which only one magic is practiced, in which one set of beliefs are held, bound to be a land with no wars, no differences of opinion at all? The Grace of the Creator, the Blessing of the Holy Light, will make it so.

 

“I don’t like to let you travel alone,” Laana says, looking into Valeera’s shining green eyes. She wonders again, as she often has, whether those eyes will someday shine gold or silver like they were meant to if not for the corruption her lover suffered for so many years. “Especially in your condition.”

“My condition?” Valeera says, cracking a crooked smirk. “Laana, my moonlight, I’m fine. My condition if anything is mild chafing because my leather pants are still damp.”

Laana can’t help but laugh. Still. “What will you do? The journey to Gadgetzan will take you through the night.”

“I do well traveling at night, love,” Valeera says, and she steps closer, closing the already small gap between them, and lifts herself onto her toes. “You should go now.”

Laana takes a deep breath. The smell here is so different from back home, but it is no less full of the smells and natural magics of Azeroth: In Moonglade is clear water; here there is salt. There, the lush and uplifting bright smells of the forest; here, the clean and metallic smell of sand, the living odor of fish in the water beyond. “I don’t know what I’ll find there.”

“Only one way to find out.”

“I want you to be with me,” Laana says, running the tips of her fingers up Valeera’s back. The Blood Elf shivers, and Laana smiles at her.

“No point dwelling on what cannot be, moonlight,” Valeera says. “And the longer we linger here, the greater the danger becomes and the longer it is till I can mount a gryphon and start on my way to send word to Varian and make my way to meet you in Darnassus. We’ve been delayed long enough already.”

“As you say,” Laana admit, for Valeera is right. She’s impatient. She’s sarcastic and inappropriate, but she’s right. “Kiss me, then.”

Valeera smiles and raises herself higher on her toes, meeting Laana’s lips, humming as they kiss. And when Valeera’s hands grab hold of Laana’s backside and squeeze—

“Eee!” Laana squeals, pulling suddenly away and feeling her cheeks go red—perhaps all four cheeks.

Valeera laughs lightly and pulls her back for another kiss. “I love you.”

Laana’s whole body reacts to the words, filling with heat and seeming to swell. “My dear heart,” she whispers, pressing her cheek against Valeera’s and closing her eyes, remembering her smell, the feel of her body against hers, “I love _you_.”

Laana feels the press of Valeera’s lips on her cheek, and the impetuous rogue steps back. “Go now,” Valeera says. “Do the thing with the casting and the teleporting, and do it quickly before I lose control and take you right here on the sand with all these huge turtles watching.”

“Good luck, dear heart,” Laana says as she brings her hands together in front of her and a glowing ball of druidic magic begins to form between her palms. “I will see you soon in Darnassus, and you can take me _there_ , on the _grass_.”

There is a moment of darkness, and then a longer moment of silvery, shining emptiness, and then she feels herself re-form, and she feels the ground beneath her bare feet—her boots lost to the Great Sea—but it is not the soft, lush grass of the hilltop looking over Lake Elune’ara, so close to the path that leads up to her lakeside home.

As the material world comes into focus, the world around her is familiar, yet impossible—it is the same sense she’s had upon seeing the empty corpse of an old acquaintance, or a killed soldier on the battlefield. That is what Moonglade is now.

Laana steps away from the shore and moves slowly toward the burned ruin of Nighthaven. The buildings are fallen and charred, black and sooty skeletons of the homes and shops and inns they’d once been. She can still smell the fire upon their remains.

“My house,” she whispers to herself, and she turns and runs up the lake path, but she knows before the loathsome sight comes into view what she’ll find, for she can smell it on the wind blowing gently off the lake: her house in ashes, a bit of timber there, perhaps a bauble among the ashes.

Laana stands at the end of the lake path—at the foot of her burned front steps—and looks out over Moonglade. Nothing green grows here any longer. The trees that still stand are black. The grass has been burned away entirely. All that stirs is a buzzard, checking its wings on the blackened branch of a tall tree on the lake’s eastern shore. A wisp, too—perhaps it’s flown in from Darkshore to see what’s happened—flutters close to Laana’s face and hums its lovely song, but it only serves to break her heart further. She drops to her knees at the lakeshore, holds her face in her hands, and weeps.

The druids’ home in Azeroth is no more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valeera crosses Tanaris. Coal and Honeycut begin their investigation in Ironforge. The King means to question the High Priestess.

The quickest route from the southern tip of Tanaris to Gadgetzan is along the narrow trail between outcroppings that runs due north from the beach. Under better circumstances, Valeera Sanguinar--the shipwrecked Blood Elf rogue--would take that route.

This morning, though, as the sun climbs the sky to her right over the sea, Valeera walks along the shore and a much longer route. She does not choose this route because her pace ought to be lazy and relaxed, nor because she particularly loves the smell of the sea or the sound of its crashing waves. But its coolness and its spray are another matter, and a path due north through Tanaris--she without water or food--might have left her starved and dry before nightfall.

_ Also there's the Gaping Chasm _ , Valeera thinks to herself as Southbreak Shore comes into view.  _ I hate bugs. _

She doesn't care much for the ale-soaked pirates who camp on Southbreak Shore, either, but they're just men and women, easy to avoid, easy to fool, and--if it comes to it--easy to kill. 

Their numbers are thin at first, and Valeera has no trouble evading their view. She gathers the shadows around her--the trick of all rogues--and moves quickly along the wet sand. Before long, she reaches the Lost Rigger Cove.

The pirates' pier juts out from the sand and over the crashing waves of the sea, where it meets the great once-Alliance ship that has docked for since out of mind. To her left, Valeera is aware also of the pirates' quasi-village, a collection of crude huts and longhouses set around an always-burning bonfire, all behind a log wall with a well guarded gate. Valeera has no business in there, and merely keeps half an eye on the guards and patrols as she passes, but the pier is another matter.

She steps lightly onto the wood of the pier, and the pirates there--not as well trained as Alliance or Horde soldiers, but still more disciplined and a better shot with a rifle than one might expect from a crew of eternally drunk layabouts--pace the long dock, their long guns on one shoulder, their eyes straight ahead, their steps rhythmic and predictable. 

One of them wears a parrot. Valeera almost doesn't notice, but when it caws and takes flight and swoops at her, it's too late anyway.

"Haw!" the miserable bird screams, alerting its master and his comrades. "Who goes there? Who goes there? Haw! Avast ye, mateys!"

Sabers are drawn, rifles are lowered, and the parrot pecks at her face and pulls at her hair until the shroud of invisibility is gone from her. In moments, Valeera is surrounded, unable even to draw her daggers before she's taken facedown to the planks, blindfolded, and bound at the ankles and wrists.

"Take her to Captain Dreadbeard!" a voice cries, and Valeera feels herself lifted from the pier and carried across the sand, the pirates hooting and cheering as if they'd brought down Varian himself. 

They drop her onto the sand not far off, and she at once can feel the heat off the bonfire on her face. When they pull off the blindfold, she squints at the brightness and heat of it before she's roughly grabbed by the neck and pulled up to her knees. Valeera widens her eyes in spite of the tears that begin to flow--from the heat and light and dryness of the fire, not from her heart--and finds the rugged and worn face of a bearded man, his skin dark with the sun, his beard black and frosted with gray, and his eyes beady and bloodshot. 

"What, praytell," he says, pulling the hat from him head with a free hand to reveal to his freckled and ruddy bald head rimmed with long black hair, "brings a Blood Elf to my camp on such an otherwise fine day? Did you wash ashore after floating all way down from Quel'Thalas?"

The pirates around hoot and laugh and cheer for their captain and his wicked sense of humor. 

"Not quite so far," Valeera replies, struggling to climb to her feet as the captain releases his grip on her neck. "But that's the general idea, yes."

"And you thought you'd sneak through the camp, maybe nip off with a chest or two of my gold?" the captain says, his voice climbing to a roar. 

Valeera shakes her head. "I had no such intentions," she says. "Just trying to reach Gadgetzan, maybe buy a flight out of this desert."

The captain paces in front of her, his sailors standing by idly, grinning at his antics. Valeera stands and faces him and shakes her head to get her hair off her damp and sandy face. 

"I have no quarrel with you, Captain," she says. "Unbound me, and I'll be on my way. No one needs to die for this."

The captain sets her with an icy glare for a long moment, and then bursts into laughter, slapping his thigh, allowing his sailors to laugh with him. He puts an arm around the nearest--a young woman with hair as black as the captain's and a nose that looks to've been broken three times or more. She passes him a bottle and he takes a long drink.

_ They're all drunk _ , Valeera thinks.  _ This will be too easy. _

And as the captain hands the bottle back to the sailor and brings his sleeve across his chin to wipe away the booze that missed his mouth, Valeera leaps from the sand and brings both fists down on the captain's nose, knocking him to the sand. Before his sailors can react, she's cut her wrist bindings on the blade at his belt, stolen that blade, and cut the bindings on her ankles. When she stands, with their captain’s sword in her hand and a wide and ready stance, the sailors are upon her.

Valeera dodges, strikes, stabs, and swirls in and around the gang of drunk sailors, more like a shadow than a woman, and before long ten sailors lie dead around the bonfire. Their captain, finally gathering his senses, rises with his hands over his nose to stop the bleeding. "Who--who are you?"

"I am no one to be trifled with," Valeera says, and she slips the sword into her belt. "I'll go now."

She turns her back, but Captain Dreadbeard is drunk, stupid, and proud. He pulls a sword from the hands of one of his fallen seamen and shouts, "You shall not escape so easily, lassie!" 

Valeera almost feels sorry for him as she ducks under his wobbly blow, draws her sword, and brings him to the ground. 

"Please," he says, his voice straining as his own blade presses against his throat. "Let me live."

"That chance is passed," Valeera says, and she draws the blade, tight and hard and fast, cutting his throat. She wipes the sword on his jacket, sheathes it again, and at the last moment thinks to nab the hat from his head before hurrying out of the pirates' cove and toward Gadgetzan. 

 

The SI:7 agent known as Coal is home again. He's been to Ironforge more than once since he joined SI:7 decades ago, but never for long, and returning to the great city under the mountain is always difficult: heartbreaking, proud, disorienting, yet comfortable. As he strolls the darkening passages toward the Forlorn Cavern, it feels at once familiar and foreign. 

When he was a lad, he took his first steps into this bleak, remote section of the city, urged on by his brothers--all of them proud members of the Assassin's League, or Ravenholdt, as the guild is often known. He strode in that morning--though who could have guessed the time of day down in this darkened, miserable place, always smelling of the fetid little underground lake it hid--and bought two short daggers, a vial of poison, and a black leather hood. It cost him all his money, right down to the last copper.

But it was worth it. He spent the day skulking down in Kharanos. He picked a pocket or two, stole a short bottle of ale from the inn, and even ventured off the road, down into the cave just below town. There he killed as many wendigos as he could find, skinning them for their sought-after hide. He was deep in the cave when a wendigo greater and more powerful than any he'd seen in his young life roared out of the icy shadows and knocked him onto his arse.

"Watch yourself, laddy!" a voice roared to him, and a pair of men-- _ Stormwind _ men--rushed past him and brought the beast down easily. Their leader stood over the huge corpse. "Edan the Howler, they call him," he said, his brown eyes twinkling at Coal. "I've hunted for him lo these many years, looking for his hide to wear as a cloak, and his horn to wield as a dagger."

He leaned forward and offered Coal his hand. "My name is Matthias Shaw."

Coal got to his feet as Shaw's men skinned the monster and liberated its horns. Coal introduced himself, and asked, "Are you with the guild--with Ravenholdt?"

Shaw spat. "We are with SI:7, the intelligence division of Stormwind's impressive military. My allegiance is to King Varian Wrynn, not some crooked old thief halfway across the world."

Coal never looked back. As soon as his training with Hulfdan Blackbeard was completed, Coal boarded the tram south, disembarked in Stormwind, and made a bee line for SI:7 headquarters to become one of the first dwarven agents of SI:7.

Now he steps into the muggy dank of the Forlorn Cavern, his hood back and his chin high, and strides to the shore of the little underground lake. "Grimnur!" Coal calls, and his rough voice echoes through the cavern.

The fisher on the little lake's shore flinches the tiniest bit. Most dwarves wouldn't have noticed, but Coal does and grins to himself. 

"Well," Grimnur Stonebrand says, not even pulling his eyes from the shining black surface of the pool and from the silver line of his fishing pole. "Does Baradun Bladespinner grace the Cavern with his presence once again?"

"Don't use that name," Coal says, snarling at his ear. "Or that tone, angler."

Grimnur laughs. "Oh, it's Coal now," he says. "I'd nearly forgotten. If only I could!"

Coal snarls. "I'm in no mood, Grimnur. My mission is urgent, and if ye know what's good for ye--for all us folk from under the mountain--"

"Do you still count yerself among us,  _ Coal _ ? Or aren't ye now living in the human city, down where it's never cold, never snows, and that beard on yer face serves no purpose, like to keep ye warm . . . or pull a fine-looking human woman?"

"Ahh!" Coal says, turning his back on the fisherman. "What do you know about it?"

Grimnur sighs and reels in his line. The hook is empty, and he sighs again. "I know this much, once-friend," he says. "I know the Light has grown too bright, so it even shines down into this cavern."

Coal turns again. "It's been here? This deep into the city?"

"Aye," Grimnur says, nodding as he kneels on the shore of the pool. "Calder is gone."

"Alexander Calder?" Coal says. "The warlock?"

"Aye," Grimnur says. "And Thistleheart,  _ and _ Briarthorn. All gone. Vanished."

"When?"

Grimnur shrugs as he rises, his basket in one hand, his pole over his shoulder. "No one can say for sure," he admits. "Been a day at least since I've seen 'em down here, and my people at the gate and gryphon have seen neither hide nor hair of any of 'em either."

Coal stares past the fisherman at Gerrig Bonegrip's shop. Though no one's seen Gerrig himself in a dog's age, his shop has always been and continues to be the gray-market venue for all manner of fel magic.  _ Perhaps no longer _ , Coal realizes.

"Excuse me," Coal says to Grimnur, and he slips into shadow and climbs the steps to Gerrig's shop. It's empty now, as Grimnur implied, but not only of people--not only of the dwarf, two gnomes, and one human who frequented the shop. Rather, the shelves are bare. Gone are Calder's contraptions, Gerrig's black-market scrolls and books, Thistleheart's trinkets so odd and off-putting that he could find few people, even among the warlocks he trained, willing to look at them long enough to hear his explanation of their particular uses. 

The shop is truly bare now, and whoever has done this has left only one thing in their wake: the distinctive smell and eerie glow of Holy Magic used in battle. 

"I thought I'd find you here."

Coal doesn't have to check the doorway to see: it's Honeycut.

"It's the only Ironforge target so far," she goes on, moving into the shop and standing beside Coal, "far as we can tell."

"Moonglade already laid waste," Coal says, sitting on a bench near the door. "An easy target: not a practitioner of Holy Magic anywhere. But here, Stormwind, even the Horde capitals . . . there'll be more precise strikes, like this one. It's a good opportunity to catch them in the act."

"Maybe find out who  _ they _ are," Honeycut says, sitting beside him. 

Coal coughs and shifts in his seat.

"I make you nervous," Honeycut says. "I don't mean to."

"Don't be ridiculous," Coal insists.

Honeycut clicks her tongue, opens her mouth to reply, and instead says, "Let's speak to the council tonight, before the next target is hit. If we can prepare them . . ."

Coal stands and nods at the gnome. "Alright," he says. "But you'd better let me do the talking. The dwarven council don't take too kindly to other races offering unsolicited advice."

"Whatever you say," Honeycut says, and she practically jumps from her seat, so her blue pigtails bounce as she goes out the door and down the steps.

 

"I cannot bear all this sitting still, Broll," King Varian says, once again rising from his throne to pace the Keep.

"What action would you take, Lo'Gosh?" Broll says, leaning on his elbow at the table nearby, running his fingertip over the rim of his long-empty glass.

Varian stops his pace to set his friend with a gloomy stare. "If I knew that . . ."

"Exactly."

The king harrumphs and retakes his throne. There he slumps.

Broll, sighing heavily, rises from his bench. "Come, we'll walk to the Cathedral," he says. "The air and exercise will do us both good, and perhaps Laurena can offer some insight into this magically erased scroll."

"Matthias has already questioned her on the matter."

"Perhaps Her Grace will respond more loquaciously to a king's ear . . . and hand," Broll suggests.

The king, smirking and unconvinced, rises from his throne. "Fine, we'll go. I expect it will be a wasted trip, but I prefer to waiting here, sitting idly, and hoping for news from the four corners of the world."

 

The sun is low over Stormwind's west wall and the King and his druidic friend walk along the canal. Three of the royal guard follow close behind, at Marshall's insistence. As the two heroes cross the bridge toward the Cathedral, though, they are surprised to find a shimmering figure at the bridge's peak, standing alone as if waiting for them.

“I’d have prefered if you’d come alone.” It is High Priestess Laurena, one hand on the bridge’s railing, her touch as light as her hair, as her skin, as her magnificent aura.

“Your Grace,” King Varian says, and he nearly bows--he, a  _ King _ , nearly bows.

Broll  _ does _ bow, deeply and grave, and behind them, the royal lower their weapons and themselves to one knee, and they bow their heads and mutter prayers of gratitude to the Creator, for she is his vessel.

“Rise, my children,” she intones, smiling past the king.

“You’d have preferred if  _ who _ had come alone?” King Varian asks, raising one eyebrow.

“You,” Laurena replies, and then offhandedly, “or you, Broll Bearmantle. But it’s no matter. You were heading, I presume, to the cathedral to speak with me, perhaps learn more than your man Matthias Shaw was able to from our brief but pleasant interview this afternoon?”

“Yes,” Varian stammers. “That’s the long and short of it. High Priestess, I must ask you,” he goes on quickly, “what has changed within you?”

“Whatever do you mean?” she asks, cocking her head as if truly confused. But as she speaks, she raises her arms, and her body rises from the surface of the bridge till she floats toward them, as high as Broll’s shoulders.

She stands there--if standing it can be called--and smiles down upon them. The soldiers behind the King keep their knees, and Broll averts his eyes as if to linger might make Elune herself jealous.

“Your Grace,” the King says. “I can’t . . . I don’t know to express . . .”

She laughs lightly and lowers herself till the tips of her toes hover just above the paving stones. “Don’t strain, My Liege.” She places a soft hand on his cheek, and a warmth seems to seep into his skin. It flushes him, till his toes tingle with it, as if the Holy Light itself has filled him up. “Let me comfort you.”

“Of course,” the King says, barely able to open his mouth. “I feel fine. I feel . . . good.”

Laurena moves beside him and takes his arm. “Walk with me the rest of the way to the cathedral, Varian. Do you mind?”

“I’d be delighted,” the King says, smiling. 

Broll and the soldiers stay where they are, watching the king and high priestess walk on, into the Cathedral District, arm in arm.

 

“Your fastest bird,” Valeera says as she steps up to the flight master at Gadgetzan. He’s a goblin, less than half her height, but with as much attitude and cocksuredness, if not a good deal more. “And a skin of water if you have it.”

“The general store is that way, lady,” the goblin says, squinting at her. “As for the bird, fast ain’t free. How far you going? I have a special today. Down to Un’goro Crater and back, half price--if you bring me back a raptor egg.”

Valeera shakes her head. She’s exhausted, and this opportunistic goblin’s rambling is clogging her brain. “Darnassus,” she says. “I have to go to Darnassus.”

He whistles. It reminds her how thirsty she is. “Long flight, up to Darnassus. I’ll save you some time and a few silver by sending you to Rut’theran Village instead. Take the portal from there. But it’s still a long flight, and priced accordingly.”

“Priced . . .” Valeera says, scratching her head. “Right, as to that . . .”

His eyes go wide. “Ain’t you got any money, lady? Jeez. Why am I wasting my time talking to you?”

He shakes his head mournfully and waves over the next customer, a bald gnome with a beard to his toes. “What a  _ blood elf _ wants in Darnassus is beyond me anyway,” he mutters.

“Shit,” Valeera says, turning away from the flight master and stalking across the sand toward the general store. Surely she could talk a skin of water out of  _ someone _ , at least, and maybe get a enough silver for the captain’s sword to pay for that flight, as well.

But before she reaches the shade of the shop, she’s stopped by a goblin bruiser--a guard of Gadgetzan, a foot taller than his brethren and twice as wide. “Just a minute,” he says. “I know you.”

“I don’t think so,” Valeera says, pulling up her hood in spite of the heat. 

But he grabs her shoulder and spins her to face him. “I’m sure I do,” he says, his voice rough and rank as the slum his cousins squat in up in Orgrimmar. 

Valeera steps back, pulling the sword from her belt as she does, but her back is against the wall and this bruiser’s brothers-in-arms soon flank the pair, all of them grinning at Valeera. Never before has she felt so small among goblins.

“Alright,” she says, putting away her blade and raising both hands. “You know me. Fine. No harm done. I just wanna get some water.”

The bruiser nods at the other guards and they saunter off. He leads the way into the shop. “I’ll buy,” he says, “if you’ll do  _ us _ a favor.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Valeera says. She leans an elbow on the counter as the bruiser drops a handful of silver beside her and receives a leather sack of water in return. 

He holds it out to her, but snatches it away before she can grab it.

“Come on,” she says.

“Captain Dreadbeard,” he says. “He runs the pirate village down the shore.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Valeera says, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Now, we bruisers,” he goes on, “we can’t leave Gadgetzan. The city would be overrun with thieves from the south, pirates from the sea, and trolls from the west if we weren’t here all hours of every day.”

“Of course.”

“But with help from you,” he goes on, “we can start clearing out the scum who make Tanaris the miserable hell-hole it is. Maybe get the place respectable. Better for business.”

“I see,” she says. “And why me? I’m just a down-on-her-luck elf trying to make my way north.”

“Right,” he says, winking. “You’re no one special. Not a champion fighter or anything.”

“Ah,” Valeera says, smiling and pushing off from the counter to pace the little shop. “Then you do know who I am.”

He laughs and tosses her the skin. 

“Thanks.” Valeera pops the cap and takes a long drink. It’s foul, as water goes--or perhaps she’s grown so accustomed to the water in Moonglade, to say nothing of the Moonberry juice Laana squeezes every morning and the Silverleaf tea she brews every evening that any other drink tastes fetid in comparison. 

Still, it’s water, and it’s wet. 

“Then you’ll do it,” he asks. 

Valeera reaches under her light cloak and pulls out the captain’s hat, tosses it to the ground at his feet. “Already done it. The captain’s been dead for two hours.” She holds up the skin, as if toasting the captain’s memory, and pulls another drink.

The guard’s face first falls in confusion, then brightens as he sees she’s already done the job he needs her to do. “There’s a reward, you know,” he says, scooping up the hat. “And this will do as proof.”

“A reward?” Valeera asks. “How much? Enough to pay for a flight to Rut’theran Village?”

The bruiser nods. “And dinner when you land, I’d bet,” he says. “Come on. You need to meet Marin.”

  
  
  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this episode, let's just find out what the hell happened to Herald Moonstalker after her gryphon was shot down over the Crossroads in the Barrens. Poor kid--level 3, out there all by herself.

Herald Moonstalker wakes in darkness, but she at once feels safe, loved, as if wrapped in her mother’s arms, this in spite of the cold night air and the sounds--from somewhere below her?--of tearing and snarling, like animals ripping into a kill.

It doesn’t take long, even on this night with almost no moonlight, for the night elf’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, and soon it all becomes clear. She is cradled halfway up a tree, its branches holding her in a ragged grip, and though this is not Teldrassil, and quite obviously a stout, crooked tree of the golden savannah known as the Barrens, it is a tree nonetheless, and even an untrained elf like Herald Moonstalker feels a oneness with all trees, and that is why she feels safe.

As to the chilling noises from below . . . that is less comforting. The herald contorts just so until she has a view of the scene perhaps twenty feet beneath her in the thorny brush surrounding the base of the tree like a shirt collar around a throat. The gryphon she rode from Jaina Proudmoore’s small island queendom of Thermore lies there, already torn almost beyond recognition, and a pack of hyenas works to free every morsel from the corpse. Three vultures, too, flap about, vying for pieces of the downed majestic beast. 

Herald Moonstalker has little choice, then, but to wait until the scavengers have eaten their fill and moved off someplace out of the way to sleep. Then she can climb down and find a way out of the hellish landscape. Though she hasn’t often been far from Darnasssus, her basic understanding of geography puts her, though well inside Horde territory, also within reasonable marching distance of Ashenvale. A Silverwing Sentinel outpost there will be her destination.

 

It’s nearly an hour before the hyenas and vultures are satisfied and willing to leave the stripped carcass in the brush. The herald watches them slope off--the hyenas’ eyes shining in the darkness in yellow, and though the eye color is close to that of great night elves like Malfurion Stormrage and Broll Bearmantle, it is somehow sickening rather than inspiring. Their laughter, too, sends a shiver up the Darnassus crier’s back, but when she is certain they’ve gone far enough away, she climbs quickly down the tree, crouches in the brush for a moment, and then hurries into the deeper darkness alongside the adjacent bluff.

The herald walks for several hours, always keeping the bluff on her left, and fairly certain she’s moving north, toward Ashenvale. She can’t explain it, but somehow the place pulls at her--its lush forests and sparkling pools and lakes. Despite the Horde’s recent incursions into that province of Kalimdor, she and all night elves still feel a connection to the place. Trusting that instinct, she carries on, but it is still well before dawn when she must stop short, gasping.

Not far ahead, there is a spark, and then another, and then a small fire crackles to life: a campfire.

The herald creeps as near as she dares, and crouches alongside another savannah tree. The sleeping lioness pays her no mind, and the herald offers a whispered thanks to Elune for that small favor. Twenty paces on, the campfire glows, lighting the face of an eager-looking orc female. She wears leather shoulder pads and a shirt and kilt of chainmail. A crude-looking hammer lies at her feet, and beside that what looks like the head of a wolf--perhaps some crude headgear. 

_ She is a shaman _ , the herald surmises.  _ I am not an elf of consequence, and to kill me would bring her no honor. I will speak to her. _

And the herald, stepping away from the tree, would do just that--but as she does, a strong hand wraps around her throat, and a ragged, wet voice snarls at her ear: “She-elf. Spying.” 

The herald grabs for the gripping hand, but is powerless against this brute, and soon she is dragged by the throat across the dusty ground toward the firelight. “Look what I found,” her captor announces to the female shaman at the campsite. Though he speaks in orcish, the herald understands perfectly. Though she has none of the combat training so many heros do have, she has one skill that might come in handy tonight: languages. As town crier, it does come in handy now and then. 

“Spying on you, I imagine,” the rough orc says, tossing the herald into the firelight face-first. 

Herald Moonstalker rolls onto her back, coughing, and looks up at the violent brute. He is another orc, of course, but male, and as such nearly twice as broad. He wears heavy-looking, spiked shoulder pads and a leather kilt. His chest is braced in a studded leather harness, and his heavy boots almost look like lopped-off kodo hooves. He bears his teeth at her and roars.

The herald shrieks.

“She looks lost,” the female says, leaning closer to her and squinting at her face. “This one’s no warrior. Not even a spy, I’d bet.”

The male--a warrior himself, from the looks of the spiked club in his hand--grunts as he drops his significant rear on the log beside the shaman. She leans on his meaty arm, almost affectionately, but then sniffs up and down his arm and neck, more like a wild and hungry dog than like a woman. “You caught something.”

The male grins and produces a blood-red flank from the pack around his waist--perhaps from a zhevra or giraffe. The herald--a vegetarian--doesn’t know and wouldn’t like to. 

The shaman, though, is pleased, and she takes the flank from him. Muttering a prayer, she reaches two fingers into a small leather pouch on her belt, retrieving a pinch of powder from there and sprinkling it over the flank. She sits then, her eyes closed and head bowed, for a long moment--the warrior sighs and thumps his feet on the dirt--before finally opening her fearsome mouth wide and using her teeth to pull a sizable bite from the meat. Then she passes it back to her mate.

“Raw?” the herald says aloud in spite of herself, and in Darnassian. She’s rewarded with a kick in the head. It hurts, but she’s thankful it came from the shaman and not from the warrior, from whom a kick might have proved fatal.

“What do we do with her?” the warrior says.

The shaman looks her over as she chews thoughtfully. “She’s no threat,” she says. “There is no honor in taking her life.”

“Fun, though,” the warrior says.

The shaman puts a hand on his thigh as if to steady his bloodlust. “Haven’t enough innocent lives been given to this day already?”

He grunts and rises from his seat and turns his back on the fire. The herald sits up once more, and when he turns again and looks down at her, she looks up at him with pleading eyes. “We cannot let her go,” he says, firm. “She is a night elf, our enemy in Ashenvale. She is of the Alliance, our enemy all across Azeroth.”

“It wasn’t always so,” the shaman says. “It will not always remain so.”

“You always do that,” he snarls at her. “You always take such a long view. Today is now. Today we kill night elves. Today we are at war with them!”

“But in times of great need,” the shaman says, “we have fought side by side with the violet-skinned elves. And isn’t  _ this _ a time of great need.”

The orc warrior points his small eyes at the shaman. They seem to shine in the firelight, and the herald can almost convince herself they’re wet.

“Have you forgotten, Kugnar,” the shaman says, her voice gentle and wise, “where we go this night? And where we’ve fled from?”

He sits beside her again and puts his arm around her shoulder. “I haven’t forgotten,” he says, and he sighs. “You’re right. You’re always right.”

“Don’t forget it,” the shaman says. “Now find a collar for her, and some rope. You’re right that we don’t want her running off, even for her own protection. This poor thing knows nothing of battle. She wears a simple linen dress--no armor, no enchantments on it I can sense. She stands a better chance of surviving till dawn as our prisoner than she does fleeing aimlessly around the Barrens.”

_ I haven’t been aimless! _ the herald wants to say, but she dares not reveal that speaks their tongue. Spy or not, for now she has at least that advantage over her captors. When the shaman extinguishes the campfire and the warrior wraps a leather collar around her neck and pulls at her rope--making the herald like a dog on a leash--she whimpers and whines only a bit. 

 

“Ashenvale is not far,” the shaman says as the sun begins to peek over the mountains to their right. “I can smell it. Can’t you, Kugnar?”

The warrior sniffs the air. “No, Dratha,” he says. “All I smell is this night elf.”

The herald wonders for a moment what exactly she smells like that the likes of Kugnar would find her offensive, but then she smells what Dratha the shaman has smelled: the cool, damp, misty air of Ashenvale, and it smells nearly like home. It lacks the saltiness that hovers around Teldrassil, and a burnt smell sits on top of it, owing no doubt to the orcish insurgence at the southern border of Ashenvale, but she smells it just the same, and she smiles.

“Ah!” Dratha says, looking back at the herald. “Our little pet smells it. She likes it, I think.”

The herald nods and smiles again, shyly this time. She’s finding she almost likes this Dratha, despite the kick in the head, and wonders even if Dratha kicked her so quickly to spare the herald a far worse kick from Kugnar.

“Take her, then,” Kugnar says, stomping past his mate. He slaps the end of the rope into Dratha’s hand.

“Come,” Dratha says, grinning at the herald and showing every inch of her lower tusks. “I’ll be more gentle,” she adds quietly, and the herald gathers her skirt and hurries to walk beside her as the sunrise falls over the huge wooden gate ahead: the entrance to Ashenvale.

 

“The meeting place is not far now,” Dratha says as the orc couple and their odd third wheel. 

It’s midmorning, and the trio have crossed most of Ashenvale, staying to the road when safe, straying to avoid settlements or passersby. 

“This lantern marks the trail . . . ,” Dratha says, slowing their pace as they round a bend beyond Astranaar. She crouches at the side of the road and runs a hand along the grass. She reminds the herald at once of the druids in her life--like Laana Mistwhisperer, who sent her on this adventure to begin with.

The herald wonders briefly how her old friend is doing on the other side of that portal, if indeed the person who sent for her was another druid and a trusted friend. 

“The path is here,” Dratha says, rising from her crouch. She sniffs the air. “Furbolgs, too, and they don’t smell . . . quite right.”

The herald knows: these are corrupted furbolgs, no longer the peaceful, shamanistic tribes of yore. They are feral, violent, bloodthirsty, more animal than they by Elune’s design should be. Still, she holds her tongue, unwilling to reveal her knowledge of the orcish tongue.

Kugnar needs no further information anyway, and he thumps his club against the trail. “Soon they’ll smell dead, then.”

“Hold,” Dratha says, grabbing her mate’s wrist. “It’s already done. Quickly.” With that, she runs up the trail, still holding the herald’s leash, jerking her along behind her. The herald is tired and hungry, but she manages to keep up with her captors. The trail--now clearly littered with all manner of tracks--winds up the hill face, and before long the land becomes familiar to the herald.

_ The ruins of Ordil’aran _ , she realizes. It is an almost beautiful place: columns of ancient stone that still carries the shine of Elune in its very veins, along with crumbling walkways and stairs, as ancient as her own people. It takes her breath away for a moment, and then she gasps again when she sees the figures gathered on the farthest rise, close to the tree known as Heartswood, itself a legend among the elves. 

Of the figures, though, Herald stands in awe, each one more remarkable than the last. There are several orcs, no more remarkable than her captors aside from their headdresses. Beside her, Dratha pulls the wolf’s head from her pack and settles it upon her own head, perhaps remembering it after their long walk for the first time. Beside the orcs stand the Tauren, a race whom the herald has always found especially awe-inspiring. Their unhurried pace, their connection to nature, and their love of peace rivals even the night elves, and when it comes to peace the Tauren have done a great deal more than the elves, to be sure. She recognizes two of the Tauren at once, but only knows one by name: he is Hamuul Runetotem, the first druid among his people and a friend to the Cenarions and even to Darnassus. 

And most exciting of all for the herald of Darnassus, in the center of the circle stands Remulos himself, the son of Cenarius and the protector of Moonglade. Herald Moonstalker has never seen him outside of Moonglade before, and to see him here in Ashenvale--with these orcs and Tauren--is at first exciting, but immediately troubling, as well.

“Dratha,” says one of the orcs as he turns to greet the arriving trio. “You’ve brought Kugnar, good. We may be in need of your club, warrior.”

Kugnar grunts and thumps the head of his club into his hand. “I’d hoped to take part in the furbolg fight.”

“They weren’t a major concern,” says the Tauren beside Hamuul as he steps away from the circle on the dais. “We spared as many as we could, and with Remulos’s help were able to  _ cleanse _ most of them of their corruption.”

“Oh,” Kugnar says, visibly disappointed that the conflict didn’t begin and end with a battle.”

“And who is this night elf you’ve dragged along with you, Dratha?” the Tauren asks, stepping up to Dratha and Herald Moonstalker. 

“A spy,” Kugnar says, growling.

“I think not!” calls Hamuul from the dais. He smiles at the Tauren in front of them. “That, Muln, is the Darnassus crier--name of Moonstalker, I believe.”

At the sound of her own name, the herald’s eyes widen, and she finds herself dropping into a curtsey to the Tauren in front of her and to Hamuul up on the dais.

“I am she,” the herald says in the Tauren language.

Muln Earthfury--for that is the Tauren before her, a great shaman and a leader of the Earthen Ring--laughs. It is a deep, rich, and beautiful laugh, and the herald finds her own bubbling laughter rising from her belly. “She speaks Taur-ahe!”

The herald feels herself blush. “I do,” she admits, and turns to Dratha and adds in Orchish, “and your tongue, too.”

Dratha grins--sinister and playful, appreciative of the joke. Kugnar doesn’t take the revelation as well, and he roars at the night elf ferociously.

“Enough, enough!” Remulos says from the head of the dais. “This council has been called because Azeroth itself sits on the precipice.”

Muln’s grin drops away, and he climbs onto the dais to stand beside his cousin once again. Dratha, too, drops the rope and stands with the shaman orcs on the rise.

“We represent the practitioners of natural magic on Azeroth,” the great demigod intones. As his father before him, Remulos is built like a great steed, but with the upper body of an antlered night elf male. His voice echoes and seems to fill the wood all around. “A great threat has arisen, and I’m afraid its source so far appears to be the Light.”

“But it’s impossible,” Dratha says. “The practitioners of Holy magic have always strived first for  _ peace _ , not war. Has it not been Varian’s son, the prince Anduin, who has encouraged our warring leaders to sit down at tables together, rather than meet on the bloody battlefield? Is he not a priest of the Light?”

“It is so,” says one of the other orcs, “but I saw that Prince Anduin yesterday in battle with Thrall himself, and the human wizard Jaina Proudmoore. What two have ever been more in favor of peace against all odds than they?”

Dratha’s mouth falls open, but she doesn’t speak at once. Finally she says, “I can think of no one--aside from Anduin.”

The other orc nods. 

“Perhaps,” says Muln Earthfury, “these holy people have been corrupted.”

“Like the furbolgs we cleansed here this morning,” adds Hamuul.

“I know something,” the herald suddenly adds, this time in her own tongue, trusting the collected druids and shamans would speak Darnassian. “Laana Mistwhisperer, a quiet druid who lives in Moonglade, was called from there yesterday, quite early in the morning. We believed the note was from another druid, but we didn’t know who.”

“But you trusted this anonymous note?” asks Remulos.

The herald nods. “If indeed our treasured high priestess herself is, as you say, corrupted, the need for anonymity seems rather understandable.”

Remulos nods and paces the stone dais. “Where did the note call her to?”

“Through a portal,” the herald replies, almost breathless with the adventure, “hidden in a cave beneath lake Elune’ara.”

“I sensed it,” Remulos says. “Its other side would have been in the Eastern Kingdoms--in the north, where our cousins spent their exile.”

“Quel’thalas?” the herald asks.

Remulos nods. “Near to there.”

“But that whole land is corrupted!” Dratha says. “Ruled by the Scourge!”

“Are they behind this, then?” Hamuul suggests.

“No,” the herald says. “I believe the note was trustworthy.”

Hamuul hums thoughtfully. “Then it must have been Broll Bearmantle himself,” he says. “I tried to contact him, to bring him here to this conclave, but could not reach him.”

“Does he know this Mistwhisperer druid?” Dratha asks, squinting toward the herald.

“Well,” the herald says, “I don’t like to spread news that ought not to be spread, but it was Broll who brought Valeera to Moonglade and left her with Laana. He must know her and trust her--quite a lot, I would think. His love for the Blood Elf child is widely known.”

Hamuul hums again, this time in agreement with the herald’s assessment. 

“Then Laana is in good hands,” Remulos says, “assuming she reached him on the portal’s far side. Now we must address larger matters, but we can work now with the knowledge that we do not work alone. Broll Bearmantle has powerful friends, including Varian Wrynn himself, and Jaina Proudmoore, too.”

“Perhaps,” Hamuul says, settling on his hooves and harrumphing lie the bovine creatures his people resemble, “this great evil can be vanquished after all, and order restored.”

“And perhaps the holy people whom this evil has most deviously affected,” Remulos adds, “can be spared, as we spared these unfortunate furbolgs.”

Herald Moonstalker finds a soft spot on the turf beneath the dais--not too close to Kugnar, the only other one in attendance not invited to climb the stone rise--and lifts her chin to watch the Cenarions and Earthern Ring begin to meditate, and to heal the world.


End file.
